Suspects and Subjects
by Vanya-Deyja
Summary: Yugi Motou wants to make the discovery of the century. Mobster Atemu Sennen will let him do whatever he wants on premise. Their first project spirals out of control when culture, science and a creature called Yami coincide. Blind/Puzzle two-shot mini fic
1. Chapter 1

"**Suspects and Subjects"  
Part 1/2 **

**Summary: **Yugi Motou wants to make the discovery of the century. Mobster Atemu Sennen will let him do whatever he wants on premise. Their first project spirals out of control when culture, science and a creature called Yami coincide.

**Theme Song:** _Dark Side_ by Kelly Clarkson

**Warnings:** dubious consent, graphic sex, descriptions of violence and experimentation

**Author Note:** well this is probably the closest I'll ever come to writing mpreg but there is _no_ actual mpreg in this. This is…well I'll be interested to see what you all think! My little tester audience said it was like a train wreck they couldn't look away from…The second half of this will be out in a week or a fortnight!

* * *

Yugi had been expelled. _Again_. What was this, number three? He dug his fingers over the hollows of his eyes, foot bouncing. Early entry to the university system, scholarships, only worked so well when he found it increasingly difficult to maintain protocol. The labs didn't like it when you played with genetics. _Idiots_. They mapped the human genome for a reason. They'd been cross pollinating and genetically enhancing food stuffs for decades. What was so wrong with pushing a little stem cell research?

Next year he'd be old enough to try as an adult and he meant that _legally_ not in the sweet _'make an effort_' sense. He'd escaped with warnings, expulsions, fines and still, if he could've afforded it, Yugi would've set up his own laboratory. His first purchase would've been weapons' grade plutonium. Fucking United Nations tracked those purchases through.

He'd always been a little bit like this. History had been fun when he was a tiny tot genius but History was stagnant, artistic, it didn't have a future. Chemistry, biology, genetics were still waiting to be peeled open by a Newton. Growing organ donations, new bodies, curing brain injuries were _so_ close. He felt some nights in fever dreams he could feel them at the tips of his fingertips just slipping away thanks to animal testing regulations and religious semi-political paranoias. Maybe he needed to move to North Korea.

Seventeen, so young but with so little time to make an impact Yugi was sure he could taste himself getting older. Mitosis and Meiosis slowing and starting as his hormones dialled back to enter adulthood. He could do something, something amazing, if you put him in the right fucking century.

That was why he hated waiting. He needed a textbook, a pen, something to plot with while he tried to trace chromosomes inside his head. Sunny day, sweet blue sky, pretty girls waiting for the bus was all nonsense. It happened every day while the discovery of the century did not. His foot tapped, it was a twitch of his he couldn't seem to stop when he was bored ,and dragging his fingers over his face was sure he looked like a racoon. His thumb nail on the opposing hand scratched at the plastic of his frappe.

Store bell chimed.

The first time Yugi saw Atemu Sennen he wasn't terribly impressed. Handsome, sure, devastating nearly like a nuclear explosion but the problem was those eyes. Atemu Sennen had killer's eyes, Yugi realized later, all a tangle of ambition and hubris with a clumsy dash of lightning to make the mix stick during the bake. Atemu Sennen had that bad boy, casino, swagger that was associated with Russian mobsters but Yugi knew crazy when he saw it and Atemu Sennen was break every rule in the book _crazy_.

Two years later Yugi was going to wish he'd never laid eyes on him.

"Yugi right?" He spread himself into the opposing seat by the café window.

"Yeah," Yugi was initially surprised that Atemu didn't like last names but he realized the man liked everything to be personal.

"Heard you got expelled."

"Yep," he shrugged. He needed work, there was no mistaking that, Grandpa Motou wasn't about to fund a NASA base but there wasn't much luck to be had in trying to hide the truth. Face it and fix it was the motto of survivalists.

"Good." Atemu snatched his drink lazily, peeling out the untouched straw he tipped it the lips. "Like caffeine?"

"I guess," Yugi mumbled into the palm of his hand dully. He'd never quite gotten his skill set up at socialising with people who were stupider than him.

"Good," the man repeated, "you're going to need it."

"I got expelled," he sighed, "the uni's not funding any grant work."

"The university would just get in the way," Atemu snorted. "I'm funding. You want a job?"

"Yeah," Yugi paused warily. "Do I have to prove I'm any good?"

"Read your files, heard all about the Harvard fiasco. You're a nifty little Frankenstein aren't you?" He grinned tightly. "Think that clinched it unless, of course, you've got some problem with a blatant disregard for ethics? In which case I'm not your man."

He lilted over the syllables, leant a little closer, razor sharp and tempting. Atemu Sennen just had to dangle the apple but it was low hanging fruit to begin with. Yugi felt his eyes open a little wider, interested snared, and like an animal peeked up from where his mouth rested into the palm of his hand.

"Sign me up Will Robinson."

"I didn't think you'd mind." He purred. "Don't care about wage or hours?"

"Not if you're going to let me do what I want."

"We're going to get on just fine."

* * *

The basic premise was simple or at least as simple as anything they did got in those days; the good old days, the golden sleepless days, the single days.

Atemu Sennen didn't do anything legal except paint his house once every few years. Terrorist ring really, espionage, something like it in any sense. Long hours, sex and guns were the three staples round him but Yugi still didn't care. Not even looking back. That part, that detail, was upstairs partitioned off from Yugi's part in Atemu's life. Their relationship, Yugi's part, was all downstairs in the subbasements of the expansive house in Sennen's little crime ring. That was Yugi's focus and his use.

Yugi would end up practically living in the laboratories before too long but he didn't at all struggle to remember the glorious pleasure that came wafting through him when Atemu presented the complex to him with the security key. The whole place was biologically sealed, quarantined, completely sanitary and outfitted with equipment illegal levels of good. Yugi fell under a wave when he stepped into that underground cavern. It was a rush as if he'd come home to his own personal burrow and he swore he never wanted to leave in the first few moments breathing pumped air-conditioned oxygen.

Anything Yugi needed he could get. Anything Yugi wanted to do he could. Minus, of course, the catch because Atemu Sennen never did anything out of the goodness of his heart and never for free. He was selling and buying between companies and governments. He was good at it. He liked money, power, tangible things that lasted as investments because people withered and were watery. Yugi agreed with him on that mostly. So there was a catch to Yugi's ill-begotten freedom.

"I don't care the hours you keep," Atemu plucked files from the cabinet drolly. "It's all salary pay. Let yourself in. Bonus pay comes when you finish the first job. There's a confidentiality waver you sign now."

Yugi needed it slapped on the table only for the seconds it took to twist it under Atemu's fingers and scrawl his signature in a bold sweeping gesture of the hand.

"Fine, what's the good stuff?"

They were hence co-conspirators from that second on.

Atemu smirked, that first devious smirk, and started opening, unfolding, the hand written files and printed spread sheets.

"I started it. I need someone to finish it." He drawled. "You build it. You can do whatever else you want while it's cooking."

"What are we baking?"

"New life."

The first manmade, genetically engineered, organism bigger than a couple of cells because someone, somewhere, wanted a weapon or at least that was always why Yugi assumed they were making it. Two years on he wasn't sure, they'd lost too many files for him to be sure of anything, but for the first while he was sure Atemu Sennen was designing something for a global takeover bid to rival the Nazis.

Yugi still didn't care, not even then, because he was young, reckless and greedy. He was starving for that stimulation and that chance to see if he _could_. If he could make Atemu Sennen some monster then he could cure cancer easy next year. That was the plan. Dream job and best laid plans. All that golden potential they'd squander. That was down to classical haramatia.

Yugi rifled through the sheets, felt his lips dry and his heart quicken. In those days he'd been so bad at reading Atemu's doctor handwriting. Now he could decipher every miniscule note hidden in the margins but those days it came to him in clusters of key words and the elaboration of the electronic read outs. Chromosomes, beautiful chromosomes, a DNA bank, 60% the magic number of predator wanted as absolute minimum…

That was the first time Yugi realized that Atemu Sennen was a genius in his own right.

Just call them Pierre and Marie Curie.

"This is…" Yugi felt the adrenaline at the back of his throat. "Holy…"

"Think you can?" Atemu was always for business.

"Heh, yes," in a heartbeat Yugi was sure. He was starved, half savage, when their eyes met and Atemu was sure then, Yugi suspected, that he had the right crazy kid for the job. "This is amazing. You've really got all the equipment?"

"Figure out how to use it," was Atemu's curt answer. "Then get baking."

"Why aren't you doing this?" Yugi was mystified. This was his nirvana.

"It's a full time job. I've already got one." Atemu shrugged. "You get to do all dirty stuff. Fix the problems."

Taste the glory was what it sounded like to Yugi. So he nodded, ate it up, because even though it was wrong and playing God and a million other levels of dangerous this was what he'd always wanted to try. He didn't want to be normal. He didn't want to die without purpose. He was lonely and stupid in the worst ways and too smart in others. Yugi was going to get them killed. Though, considering Atemu, it would be a team effort all the way.

* * *

It made Yugi cry in the first two weeks. It was a long sterilization process. He'd never screamed at so many centrifuges. Nothing had ever challenged him in the same way. So Yugi had stuffed his headphones in, wiped his tears with a snotty sniff, and gritting his teeth had dug in deep. More trying, more fiddling, chemistry and baking mingled with biology.

It was a lot of coffee in the first couple of weeks. He was haggard. He'd showered in the quarantine chamber twice in four days, hadn't left the lab, hadn't seen the sun and wasn't sure how much solid REM he'd gotten when Atemu made himself known.

"Where are we up to?" He was in a suit that time but it was rumpled. He'd been at some party playing prince charming but down in the lab he was all curt and lacking in airs or graces.

"The genes don't want to splice," Yugi's shoulders were heavy, the conversation reminded him to down a mouthful of the smoothie that had been lulling on his desk forgotten for an hour. He was too tired to remember manners.

"What've you tried?" Atemu grunted impatiently, stripping his tie.

"Everything, I keep changing the levels," he mumbled fingers over the hollows of his eyes. "Your recipe's shit. It's unstable."

"What are you going to do then?" He prodded arms crossing, knee popping out, tie dangling. It was that face of his the '_I pay you for a solution_' face Yugi loved and loathed.

"I need human," Yugi shot cautiously. No facility in the world would allow him that. Yugi had a whole bank of DNA samples and no human juice.

Atemu strode, utterly flippant, and snatching up one of the kits sprawled on the dishevelled desk swiped the inside of his mouth. It was business to him. He just didn't think about it or if he did he was fearless of consequence when he sealed off the sample and threw it back over Yugi's desk.

"There," he shrugged, peeling off his blazer to hang over his shoulder. "Use mine."

Yugi had stuttered and for the first time had felt threatened by the challenge. He hesitated on that threshold, afraid, because for the first time no one was going to hold him back from crossing the line so set in concrete.

"See you in the morning kiddo," Atemu dismissed, "go home and get some sleep. You look like shit."

* * *

He didn't.

It worked. Blood, sweat and tears congealed into Yugi's skin. He laughed, he cried, and collapsing his face into his forearms at the bench sighed in exhaustion. This was passion. The microscope, the centrifuge, the samples he'd just grown were _life,_ new life, an entirely new organism, in one perfect little zygote.

He'd cleared his hair back, licking his dried lips, and dangerously considered that this was what some infertile mother must've felt like upon finally conceiving.

It was the first time Yugi thought of himself as _Mother_.

That was his third mistake.

* * *

He took Tuesday and Wednesday off. Showered, slept, gathered up most of his clothes to head back to the lab and checked his bank account. _Damn_. He was set. His was surprised his Grandfather hadn't forgotten who he was yet. He needed to start calling home he thought but once he passed quarantine back into the lab he forgot all that.

It was antiseptic, otherworldly, and inside the tomb Yugi felt he belonged. There was a peacefulness to all the white tiles and silver steels. He'd never been much of a people person, never terribly interested he told himself, but then again he'd never much had the chance to develop with kids his age. That boy genius thing had put him in situations with kids and adults too distanced from him in practical terms of options and experiences. Still he could think of nothing more wasteful than spending his life as a breeder. He got wanting to have a family, he thought, but as usual he was a fool about that as well. Yugi didn't get it. He didn't understand paternity and maternity. He didn't understand the power of implication and culture on his mind.

The first implantation was easy, smooth, but the problem was the stickiness of the procedure. Yugi had to touch, had to grow, had to get his hands dirty in a way he'd only ever experienced growing viruses and dissecting corpses.

The artificial womb was all cow cells, the first zygote was 60% predator just like Atemu wanted and another 40% assorted things mostly non-mammal. It was a bad plan just in general but Yugi had hardly any experience to know that. However condescending and disapproving he could be in retrospect. No one had any experience in this field, he was the first, and that still made him tingle.

Yugi invested himself in it. He had no idea how long it should grow, how long it would take, or how big it would be and he couldn't know. So he waited like some nesting hen, prodding and checking, and found the placenta lining too thick to ultrasound. Little tiny projects started on the periphery but none of them very good considering he was distracted by pressing greatness.

At six weeks the weight was good at least for most mammal offspring and certainly all reptilian. He was compelled to stick his hand in the oven and check to see if it was golden brown yet. Donning the medical glove and slipping his arm into the artificial womb was an old technique farmers used on cows. He suspected that if the thing had as much crocodile in it as he had put in then it might be in an egg so he was expecting hard shell.

Arm in, first to the elbow, he felt the whoosh of sticky umbilical fluid round him through the glove and could very nearly hear its heart beating. He pressed and found he felt the placenta, felt structures of hardening calcium limbs, and was relieved. Baby was growing. He'd made the mistake of lingering a little too long, of pushing his hand a little too deep. He didn't detach the placenta from the womb, not in that motion he was sure, but the thing inside the case became distressed suddenly.

It was the predator in it. There was too much cold blood and teeth in the genes. It lashed, to Yugi it felt like a violent kick against his hand, in something like a contraction and he knew then he needed to withdraw his arm.

The motion of trying to free himself slowly set it off even more. Yugi's arm pulled back, the thing twisted violently, and then in a rush everything snapped. The artificial womb spasmed, thought it was time to give birth, as something horribly sharp cut the placenta and dug into Yugi's forearm. He screamed, pained and choked, and the umbilical fluid from the sack cut free by the attack the waters broke. So in that same second of pain he was suddenly dumped with a rush of sticky sludge tumbling out of the opening.

Yugi tugged, was in blitzing pain, and baby-1 didn't want to let go. His free hand stumbled over the trolley to his side, tried to find the scalpel and pulling hard managed to fight the steely, alien, grip long enough to get his arm out to the wrist. That was the first look he got at the tail. Wrapped round his forearm that sickly green appendage had fastened tight round his forearm, almost cutting circulation, and with it the black smooth tip had dug under his skin.

With the fluid leaving the womb baby-1 was dying and with that increasingly violent. Yugi cut, almost did the same to his arm in the slippery fumbling, and panting, hissing, severed the thin tail by pushing up and away from his arm. The end still attached flailed gruesomely and finally free Yugi fell back onto his ass in the umbilical sludge. His fingers ferreted, trying to pull the tip out in a panic. The tip of the tail clung like a leech for a moment before Yugi slid it lose from where it had penetrated like a fang. It was leaking at the tip.

Venom.

Yugi knew that in the instant and it made sense. Scorpion, Black Mamba… it could've been a million different compounds of neurotoxin or blood congealer. He panicked, his head spun, and heart pounding he circulated the poison faster as he shambled out of the chamber into the stock room.

The specimen was young, the venom was weak, and it was only lucky scientific guesses about the type of venom that saved Yugi's life in the hand trembling seven minutes that followed as he injected himself with anti-venom very near the burning wound site.

He was bleeding, holding the ripped skin together with his palm, and limping back to the chamber found the wretched vessel had stopped throbbing violently. Baby-1 died without him even being there. Sludge and venom sprayed, stagnating and boggish, on the tiles like a murder scene as Yugi panted flushed and horrible pallid in the door way. It was his fault.

* * *

He'd washed himself in the quarantine showers still trembling. The wound had to be scoured under antiseptic alcohol and it felt as if part of Yugi as searing off. Venom gone or not the wound was inflamed and acidic.

It was going to scar Yugi knew when he wrapped it and he was right. Two years on it hadn't faded. At the time it had taken weeks to properly dispose of the dead, peeling, skin and see the wound heal. His arm felt constantly wrapped in gauze, a thick reminder, and Yugi felt it brush his hip where the hem of his shirt rode up for days always startling him.

It was too violent, the whole thing, he liked to think the event was fast and emotionless but he was frightened. He was too young for this.

"What happened to you?" Atemu was _so_considerate.

"It was too violent," Yugi mumbled resentfully, fingers pattering across the plastic keyboard. "It attacked me before I could get it out."

Even as he said it Yugi was too connected to the thing. He felt guilty. It had been acting on survival instinct imprinted into it. Baby-1 (and even that title was far too personal) had been distressed and Yugi had been clumsy but that was supposed to be science. Testing, trying, never leaving anything just to take its time and never flying blind.

"Well you're onto something," Atemu was distant to the idea then, your typical absent Doctor Frankenstein. "What's next?"

"I'm going to accelerate the growth of a new one in one of the tanks," Yugi mumbled. That way he could see it and monitor it the whole time. Grow it past infancy and rip it out into the world without sticking his hands in anywhere dark.

"You'll miss all the early development for observation."

"_I know_," Yugi grunted, he hated that. "If I can get that to work I can figure out how to grow a new one better. If I just know what it's going to look like…maybe…"

Atemu didn't really care for his hypothesis specifics.

"Whatever," he shrugged.

Yugi should've known, perhaps, but asking him to realize so much about the dangers of himself over the dangers of poisons and nails was asking a child to run before they could walk.

* * *

Baby-2 looked like a rat.

It took Yugi a month of careful tinkering to accelerate the growth rate without breaking it the whole thing on display in a tube. It was a hairless rat, essentially, about the size of a Jack Russel with hands, fingers, and feet. It was hideous and that tail which on the earlier specimen had wounded Yugi was still there lulling in the tank. Yugi's arm still hadn't healed, the gauze had been reset many times and still itched when he drained the tank for baby-2 slowly.

It was slow, so slow, the process of watching the nutrient fluid drain while counting heartbeats and vitals. Yugi leant over it, knew he needed to be careful but hoped (however cautious and defensive he was) that this one would be less aggressive than its predecessor.

He had his lab coat pinned tight but it was looser those days than it had been upon his arrival to Sennen's property. The click of the tank opening, the parting of the lid as he let himself into the little glass box, was mythical and terrifying. It was perhaps the first time Yugi had ever felt vaguely spiritual, nearly religious, far too much so. He shouldn't have been mystifying the events but down in the subbasement it was just him and these things.

Baby-2 was only 5% human, still 60% predator, but the humanness showed in the fingers which were tiny on long, bended, spindly arms. It was such a big rat. Yugi could hear it breathing. It was soothed and steady but even as Yugi touched the tail gently, to tape up the poison tip in one thick glass test vial, baby-2 didn't move. It could breathe and as Yugi touched it very gently he knew it was healthy perhaps. It didn't hiss or spit. Young were supposed to make noise, were supposed to want to move on survival instinct alone and that should've been encoded into this thing. It should've been moving.

It just blinked at him through beady black eyes and as Yugi snapped his fingertips, clacking his tongue, it wouldn't twitch. Lazy was the wrong word.

Yugi felt that rise of panic creep back into him. Not again. What he tried next was dangerous but he did it without really thinking on it till much later. He picked it up, the whole thing, all nine kilos of its spindly limbs and slumping back in the desk chair tried to stir it. He clucked his tongue, he swayed it, he used his teeth to strip his gloves and cradling it with bare warm hands tried to rub some life back into it along the spine.

Nothing.

Just slow breaths and beady eyes.

Yugi tried feeding it even. Nutrient rich the milky product he tried to have baby-2 suckle should've been what it needed and wanted most but plastic teat in the creature ignored it completely.

"Come on," Yugi rocked, "come on if you don't start thinking for yourself I'm going to have to get rid of you…"

He was pleading with it.

He was too deep already. He wanted to succeed too badly.

He'd never had a mother of his own.

He was coddling.

It didn't matter though, not for all the pleading in the world, because baby-2 was a vegetable. The brain waves were stunted, broken, and all it could do was breath on its own. Nothing else.

* * *

Specimens 3 through 12 weren't much better. Yugi wavered between the artificial womb and the tank. The womb made them too violent while the tank scrambled their brains and trapped between a rock and a hard place he hardly recognized himself when he flittered home for half a day.

He was sharper than he'd ever been, his body had changed, he didn't look like a child anymore with the baby fat gone and his eyes narrowed from defeat.

When he went back, padding over Atemu Sennen's thick carpets to the elevator, his hair was thick and wet around his face. He wasn't giving up, he was a man possessed, but in his dithering attempts it seemed Atemu had become impatient.

He was in that lab that day when Yugi made it back.

Tall as he was there was something about the way Atemu turned over the things on Yugi's desk that made him think the man's fingers were always ready to itch to a trigger.

"Have fun outside the cage for a day?" Atemu teased leaning back into the desk, ankles crossed as he ran the tip of a paperclip at the dirt under his nail.

"Something like that." Yugi pushed back his hair absently from his shoulders, settling himself back in his desk to reach for the files.

"No luck with the creature feature?"

"I'm working on it."

"Taking your sweet time."

"Heh," Yugi scoffed, glancing to him. "If you think it's so easy you should be down here all day working your ass off on it."

Atemu pushed gracefully off the desk, one hand sliding over the back of Yugi's seat and so nonchalant as he was Yugi still stiffened when the man leant in close to bring his lips to Yugi's ear.

"It's not my job." He whispered. "See, kiddo, I'm the father in this relationship. I provide the home, bring the bacon, and give you all the DNA samples your little heart desires. You're the baby-mama here. Building it, growing it, and feeding it are your gig. So if we don't have a creature feature you're not doing _your_job."

Yugi inhaled stoutly.

"So," Atemu plucked mockingly simple, "you keep trying because it's not good to bring something into a dysfunctional home and I'm feeling mighty connected to Henry the eighth right now."

Threat or not that little whisper implanted the insidious idea in Yugi's mind.

_Mother_…

* * *

Atemu wasn't any happier the next time he came down but Yugi was. He startled Yugi when he wrapped both arms round his waist and tugging hefted Yugi off his feet spinning them round away from the work bench. Yugi grunted low in the back of his throat, pushed at the arms on instinct and squeezing Atemu held them facing the elevator.

"Someone's stopped sending me reports," Atemu purred. "What are we up to baby-mama?"

"I've been busy!" Yugi grunted, pushing at the arms snug round his middle and boa-constrictor tight. "Didn't think you even read the damn things!"

"I read everything." Atemu stressed sing-song. "What have we been busy with this time?"

"A working, stable, fucking specimen!" Yugi cawed, kicking out. He didn't like being stuck like a rat in a trap. He didn't trust his Henry the Eighth.

"And you haven't been gloating to me in reports?" He suggested. "That's funny. I would've thought that was the first thing you'd do. _What did you do?_"

"Nothing!" He snorted.

"I'll throw you over my lap kiddo and it won't be pleasant."

"Argh," Yugi sighed, hissing through his teeth in the exhale. "I just changed the recipe a little, for Christ's sake, and I've been busy."

"Details," Atemu stressed tightly against his ear. "How'd you change my recipe?"

"I just…" He squirmed a little in the hold. He didn't want to be like _this_when he tried to explain. "I put a little more herbivore in."

"Yugi," Atemu grumbled, warningly.

"Oh relax!" He groaned. "It's still 60% predator and carnivore. There's just a little less amphibian and reptile in the predator portion. There's only 20%. Mainly omnivorous anyway; there's marsupials, dolphins… there's not dog or cow in there or anything."

"What's the rest?" He demanded smoothly.

Oh shit.

"Human and bits and pieces," Yugi shrugged.

"_Details._"

A pregnant pause.

"I just… I upped the human a little," he mumbled, "if anything it's just putting more predator into the mix like you wanted."

"That was a _very_long breath Yugi. How much human did you put in?" Atemu was getting snappy now.

A pause, then carefully;

"30%"

"We agreed to cap on _ten._"

"Well ten wasn't working!" Yugi appealed a tad anxious. "This is! It's working beautifully now!"

"Show me."

"It's not born yet."

"_Show me._"

Yugi felt air flood back into him as those tight arms unlaced but hesitant he watched Atemu very closely over his shoulder for another motion. Everything seemed well till he turned ahead. The man's hand tightened at the scruff of his neck, on the collar of his lab coat (under which Yugi wore very little these days) and pushed him forward on his feet like a dog on a leash. He wasn't out of the woods yet.

The little strolling amble they took to the the observation room, Yugi's birthing room, was tense. Atemu was so very close when Yugi flipped the lights that he felt the others knuckles against the back of his neck, the little wisp of breath brushing his hairs, as the man's finger's tightened.

"It's bigger than the others." He murmured tightly over the artificial womb.

"Twice the size, it's been in there longer," Yugi explained softly. "The others were coming out prematurely. I think that was the the problem. They weren't fat enough."

"Is that why the colouration's different?" Atemu inquired. It had the ghost of casual conversation but the expectation for an answer and the insinuating accusation was there.

"I changed the womb composition as well. I think the match was too foreign between specimen and vessel last time as well. The cells were rejecting each other, made them small, so…" Yugi swallowed cautiously voice very calm but back very straight when Atemu's trigger finger bumped the back of his neck. "It's 30% you, 30% me, and the rest is marsupial."

"Put a little bit of you in there did you?"

"I wanted the genes to be differentiated but partially similar in majority." He explained. "More like an actual mother's body is common in some genes with the foetus."

"You have been busy."

"The placenta's thinner with this one," Yugi tried to reason casually, "I can even ultrasound it now."

"Let's then."

* * *

Atemu's hand, finally, loosened from his scruff that trigger finger releasing him from suspicion. Yugi had hoped the man would be practical and given the worst option he had just hoped that when Atemu discovered Yugi would have specimen, baby, thirteen too far along to obstruct. He had hoped if the worst was too occur then he could convince Sennen to let him see it through experimentally.

Atemu was no stranger round a medical setting it seemed. He found the technicalities of the machine, wheeled it in and grasping for the proper gels Yugi flustered to meet him halfway. Atemu handed him the handpiece, flicked up the monitor to a soft hum, and fingers skirting in a familiar way Yugi cradled the bulging artificial membrane to rub the handset against it and… he checked the screen, a little more left, his hand roved over the sack-

"_Fuck me,_" Atemu rasped.

Yugi swallowed, glanced the coiled up monstrosity flickering in and out of vision.

"Hands, head…" Atemu mumbled under his breath, fingers languid, before he seemed to twist in coughing; "the fuck is _that?_" His mobster traced a sinuous outline.

Yugi squirmed in between Atemu and the womb, fingers extending to reach the screen as he held the handpiece in place. His pinkie nail ran over the blurred focus.

"Tail," Yugi whispered, "and _not._"

Atemu frowned, comprehended and scoffed, snorting.

"Baby boy," he rasped smirking, "eh?"

"I think," no Yugi knew but in some strange instant he didn't want to tell Atemu it was and be wrong. It seemed frightful like failing to deliver the king an heir.

"Jesus almighty," Atemu swore, digging his hands into his pockets, leaning back to regard the machine.

Yugi felt a pulse, bumping, under the handset and pressing his free hand into the side of the sack felt for some distress. Did Atemu's voice…? It was a totally improper thought but Yugi felt the push under his hand and putting the handpiece for the ultrasound down he reached unconsciously for Atemu's wrist. The mobster grunted, startled and ready to lash out, but eyes flashing found Yugi and relaxed. Yugi was harmless to him.

"Here," Yugi hissed, bringing the man's hand under one of his own.

A moment, Atemu's eyes drifted up trying to focus on the feel and-

It kicked.

"Heh," he breathed.

That all made it realer to Yugi, strangely human, in the very same way it appeared to make the little existence more solid to Atemu. Part of Yugi, quiet then, somehow felt Atemu wasn't as pleased, wasn't as satisfied, as he should've been standing there. Yugi thought it was his pride arcing up, wanting to be acknowledged for his success but… it wasn't.

Atemu slipped his hand out from underneath Yugi's softer palm, dark skin scarred, and pushing the digits back towards his pockets darted in a funny, amused, motion to grasp Yugi round the shoulders as the smaller stood cautious. Yugi waited for a strike, a tantrum, but the man squeezed them half up against each other like Atemu was an older sibling and jokingly pressed wet lips to the corner of Yugi's temple, chuckling.

"Looking good baby-mama," he dropped his arm and with it Yugi's heartbeat fell, Atemu was already turning, slouching, away. "Start sending me reports again."

"You…" Yugi slumped, strangely converted. "You want to assist with the birth?"

"Nah, I trust you," he dismissed.

* * *

Subject thirteen didn't take nine months to bake mercifully. Probably the longest gestation period encoded in its genetic material was humanity. The rest had learned to let go earlier, to lay eggs, to nest. So Yugi's little mixed bag grew fast.

Yugi was asleep, on the long broad ottoman outside his primary office that had appeared recently. He had this strange labyrinth feeling in the laboratory. He would spend he wasn't sure how long in one office and then come out to find newer, better, furniture waiting for him. They restacked the cupboards, the fridge, expanded the kitchenette… Atemu seemed to appreciate from those security cameras of his that Yugi was living under his home like a fat winter mole.

He found blankets in a maintenance cupboard a day or two ago after making a proper meal and calling his grandfather to mumble over the stove. They were thick to combat the constant flux of coldly pumped air circulating the lab like a fresh breeze. Yugi had twisted, kicked his laced up shoes out under the bottom edge and rolled onto his back in vague consciousness. He didn't sleep long then, not well, and he was always dressed. He was waiting. He couldn't seem to settle, expectant that at any second an egg timer would go off and need him conscious. It was the sleeplessness of a new mother getting ready for the inner rip of baby busting free.

He had fluttered almost awake, half to the surface, in a sense beyond science that something was ready. It was a primal instinct. Something a young man shouldn't have had.

_BEEP BEEP BEEEEEP_

Yugi lurched, clumsily, up on the cushioning. His head spun from the relocation of fluids in his brain as he stuttered up and rolling out he was headed to the birthing room before he really knew what he was doing. Somewhere in the walk he woke up enough to know it was an alert from the monitoring systems, something in the pressure or the air or the fluids had changed.

Yugi stumbled, breathless and nauseous, into the room and was hit with the humid amazon wave of spilled fluids.

The water had broken.

Yugi could see the artificial womb convulsing sickeningly through contractions and thoughtlessly half off his feet slipped over the tiles to find a clear pair of rubber gloves.

He got distracted halfway there by the thrum of the connected heart monitor and wrenching himself still ignored hygiene, protocol, entirely to check the dilation. He wasn't a paediatrician but he doubted even a trained one would know what they were doing. This was the first, normal, birth of a new species Yugi had built and hopeless, young, he had no idea what to expect or what would break.

Yugi found the control panel, asserted hormonal reflexes in the manmade muscles to try and make the contraption push, loosen, give birth. Mother and doctor at the same time he didn't quite have enough hands. He'd practiced this, frantically, with the other specimens but this was so different.

He groaned, struggled, kept forgetting the way air was supposed to escape his chest and hand parting the folds of fake skin found himself opening the vessel wider. Head, domed skull, pushing against his hand Yugi used his other set of fingers to push at the top and try and work something out. Messy, he pressed up close, got slippery and-

The head came out fast, Yugi's hair stuck to his face almost in his eyes, and arms slipping he found himself struggling to make a cradle as the babe tumbled out in a rush after the shoulders. Yugi's stomach dropped, no time, had it up against his chest staining his whites red-black-green with slush and hand fumbling stupidly over the trays to his right found something dry. He forgot all about that poison spire tail, again, feeling the weight too consumed by the heat and the panicked urge to wipe the face and clear the airways.

He'd only just brushed the nose, sloppily, when tiny lips parted and like a hiccupping bird it _screeched_ loud enough to startle Yugi.

Yugi fumbled, almost thought he'd drop it but instead clutched it closer that dangerous neurotoxin filled tip, claw, sagging with a weak little twitch over his elbow. It moved, Yugi hadn't expected the sudden cacophony that lulled him to stillness; fingers curling, legs and arms and shoulders squirming, amidst moist little shrieks. It didn't sound like a human newborn, not even a decimal place, it was too thin and too hot and slimy in his arms. It felt mostly like hard cartilage on deer like limbs and looked, too Yugi, as much as rat as the rest had coiled in his arms.

Yugi found himself legless, cleared back its face and as the noise picked up some horrible, base, distress in Yugi he realized…

"_Shhh,_" he whispered, rocking the weight almost with a tip of his hip. "_Shhhh._"

Yugi was hushing it.

* * *

Yugi's face had amniotic fluid on it from pushing back his hair with the back of his palm. He was a mess and mindless of it for those first five or six hours entirely. When it lulled off half asleep he expected it to stop breathing but it snored, nasally, in the back of its throat and when it woke and rasped clucks up at him Yugi started reaching for the warm nutrient slush that should, hopefully, keep it growing.

The only memory that stuck out, two years later, in the haze of cleaning and pacing awed and confused was trying to get subject thirteen to suckle. Like a baby crocodile, a snake, it probably could've fed itself but it had so much more mammal in it now that Yugi without thinking cradled it up into his chest and tried rubbing the plastic teat against its thin lips.

Yugi was seventeen, he had no idea how to do any of it with a human child, and he'd never had a mother of his own. His grandfather told him once that she'd wanted to have a whole gaggle of children. Yugi had always looked down on that as the quickest way to strangle a woman out of her chance to leave an impression on the world but…

It creaked, whined, and hushing Yugi started mimicking the sounds down to it.

"_Shh, hnnn_," he hummed, pushing the thin plastic teat.

It whined, opened that snap jaw mouth and lips fastening squirmed uncomfortably like a cat trying to break out of Yugi's arms. Yugi's legs ached tremulously from standing so long and weak kneed in the kitchen he sunk down to lean into the hard back of the laminated cupboards.

It fidgeted but, in a second, it pursed and squelching the most miniscule kitten huff swallowed. Yugi's heart came up a little more in his throat, still on a razor's edge and watched as hesitantly convinced subject thirteen suckled.

Yugi could barely move. He watched, he listened, felt the tension and the force as it got hungrier and caught onto the rhythm of how to feed.

Tiny, clawed, double jointed feet sat on hairless rabbit legs. It was ugly. As it suckled those petite feet pushed into the palm of Yugi's cradling hand, flexing and padding like a cat on a sofa, expanding tiny muscles as it started to soften all those horrid squirms. It gave another piggish snort, swallowed, and that tiny tail that had greater dexterity than the whole of the body flicked. Yugi wasn't aware of it, had totally forgotten about it, until it wrapped, coiling, round his bottle lofting forearm. He startled, frozen, but squeezing gently before it eased the newborn thing left the sinuous limb hooked round Yugi's arm as it fed.

It was warm, the tail, very gentle unlike the earlier specimens who in bitter, writhing, rages had tried and once succeeded in poisoning Yugi. He knew by then, from the mind numbing autopsies of other specimens, the kind of heart stopping neurotoxin compounded in that injection tip spire now curled coyly, eerily, round Yugi for support. It surprised him, unlaced him, and tilting the bottle back to bring the rest of the slush towards the teat Yugi felt…

He _felt_.

* * *

Yugi found subject thirteen habitually curled its tail round him, like young monkeys almost, in some strange kind of comfort mechanism. Some eerie '_don't-leave-me_' motion of safety like a newborn grasping at much bigger fingers with their own. Yugi shouldn't have been thinking like that but at the time he didn't cut the thought off.

He was at his desk the next morning speaking to the audio-to-text converter. Bottle in one hand, newborn in the other, he was constantly distracted by tiny noises that left noticeable gaps in the tapes Yugi recorded for later use. Listening to them now hurt, surreal. It pushed into his forearm with its thumper feet, tiny uncomfortably human fingers curling, tail snug round Yugi's cradling arm as it closed its eyes and whimpered. Yugi fell into it too naturally. He hadn't slept all night, had risen half a dozen times to feed it and in a blur found it not at all disgusting or frightful. He was desensitized.

The door whooshed open, Yugi caught the word in his mouth and cut the string of it to let it go like a child's balloon as he turned in his desk chair.

The bottle found its way onto the desk, subject thirteen squawked in complaint, and rising Yugi wasn't sure quite how to face Atemu with the bundle as his unapologetic mobster strode smugly back into the picture.

"Well damn," he greeted throwing his arms open as he came too close to Yugi, "how is it?"

Yugi felt phlegm in his throat and it took a moment to swallow. He'd been hissing, purring, clucking at the tiny squeaker all night.

"Much better," he answered, turning the now squirming creature around in his arms. His fingers cradled its neck, its skull, and trying to tilt it upright into his chest Yugi felt subject thirteen fall forward and nasally gawking nuzzled, squirming, against his vulnerably warm neck.

"Heh," Atemu scoffed, "knows Mama doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Yugi mumbled dryly._ I guess _or _don't be stupid_ should've been his answers. He shouldn't have agreed with that label.

It screeched, gurgling, huffing into Yugi's skin. Little nudger never sat still when unless it was eating or sleeping.

To Yugi's great surprise Atemu's hands came up, extending expectantly and cocking his chin the mobster beckoned.

"Come on," he grunted, "let Daddy get a look at this ugly little monster."

Part of Yugi's stomach seemed to solidify into sharp jutting edges, butterflies, and everything was tossed up wrong in the air. Something about the stark honesty of Atemu's sentence offended Yugi but it was a monster. The blinders Yugi had misted up overnight were thrown into blunt profile. Something inside Yugi didn't want to share either, didn't want to hand it over to the King of the house, and said; _I spent months, I gave blood, sweat and tears to make this. You can't have it now. You can't take it off me. I did it_. _It's mine_. Possessive, broken and childish it was a ripple of niggling fear that came with the suggestion that Atemu would break it. Fuck everything up and leave Yugi without anything to weigh in his aching forearms.

Yugi conceded though, had little choice as Atemu's fingers came over his and tried to steady the transition of the fat, fidgeting, thing from one perfect, smooth, human to the other.

God hadn't had any part in making this but… Why did Yugi even think that?

Atemu cupped his arm under the head, turned the clucking face up into him, and squawking in the back of its throat subject thirteen _hissed_. Just like a black mamba but its tail sat limp as if it were annoyed not angered. To Yugi he wondered, through the haze of initial panic that made him recoil, if it smelt or recognized some difference between Yugi and Atemu or if it just didn't like the motion of being passed.

Still Yugi shuddered back when it hissed, knew subject thirteen was venomous but even though Atemu claimed to read his files he didn't flinch. He tilted his head, scoffed and huffing at his own fringe leant over the creature to grunt at it.

"Don't look at me like that runt," he murmured, holding it competently as it the creature grumbled. "I made you."

His finger tapped its nose, thumb brushing over a hairless human cheek, but Yugi was quite sure Atemu saw right through the human in it. Yugi should've never made it so human.

Subject thirteen sniffed, grunted, and falling back into squeaking clucks squirmed a little gentler in Atemu's arms. The tail came up, fell down, half an inch and kneading its tiny feet pushed into Atemu's chest.

Could it smell its primary genetic donor? Did it recognize?

"Good job baby-mama," Atemu's eyes drifted up to him lazily, connected. "Looks good."

"Should I…?" Yugi hmm'd.

"Stay with this one," Atemu cocked his chin, "let's see how it grows. Want to know what we're dealing with before we change the recipe or something. Keeping notes?"

"Copious."

"That's my favourite Dr Diabolical," the mobster slackened moving rather abruptly to hand the just settled newborn back to Yugi. He was essentially an evil scientist now wasn't he?

Yugi's hands flew out, took it up warm into his chest, and tossing into him subject thirteen sniffed, squirmed and settling curled its tail round him with a gurgling muffle. Sleepy, Yugi sensed.

Yugi cradled its head into his chest, was transfixed in a daze by the glimmer of teeth already in its mouth as it yawned slumping into him and jolted a little as he heard Atemu leave.

He should've had assistants. There should've been six or seven of them down there watching subject thirteen in a pit, in a tank, like it was a hermit crab. It would've been impersonal and impartial then. It shouldn't have been a teenage boy with something poisonous he didn't know what else to do with but hold like a mammal and feed like a baby.

All of their conversation, actually, ended up on the tape. Every inflection in Atemu's voice, every beginning of an idea, every gurgle of subject thirteen…

Yugi still had it in a bottom drawer in the Ukraine.

* * *

Yugi had to sleep eventually, under the blare of the security cameras on the ottoman he surrendered eventually to exhaustion sometime during the second day. The newborn, the thing, male and tiny and bony (too bony even to wear diapers without Yugi duct taping them on) fell asleep in a tight cat ball at his side. It seemed to morph from pet to child at an influx and when he fell unconscious Yugi worried he'd crush it or it would poison him.

He got up, groggy, after a few moments of uncomfortable sleeplessness, unease, to fumble in the bottom drawer of his desk for a vial, a tiny little glass pill bottle. He uncapped it and, conscious of every grumble, secured it over the poison tip of subject thirteen's tail.

Yugi's best solutions, it seemed, came when he was half conscious.

He slept then, for a few uncomfortable hours in vague feverish dreams that left his whole body aching, till it woke him with bird squawks hungrily.

Yugi fell asleep feeding it again.

* * *

Yugi woke face to face with slow blinking, pitch, eyes. He startled. Subject thirteen squeaked and hopping back hissed irritably. Yugi found his elbows, gaunt eyed he was sure, heart stuttering. It thumped one rabbit like back leg against his stomach, complaining, and front legs, hands, coming down made a kind of possum motion back up Yugi's chest. A hairless, humane, rat…

Yugi watched and chemicals pumping him up he found his inner biologist spinning. Humans were one of the slowest species to learn to walk, to move, of course this thing could within forty eight hours. Most species had to be up and running within the hour to stay alive so the clumsy way subject thirteen experimented with motion shouldn't have been so horrifying except that human detailing to him was…

It came up a little more up Yugi's chest, only about as long and as heavy as a fat march hare, and settling made a clucking, shrilling, possum twitter in the back of its throat nose nudging against Yugi's clavicle.

Yugi lay back into the rest of the ottoman, sighed, eyes drifting closed for a moment and opening them his hands were unsure all over how to rest their fingers on it. One warm palm sat on its back and rolling it flopped onto its side to _purr_.

Yeah it knew its mother alright or at least subject thirteen knew who was the one wielding the bottles.

* * *

At seventy-two hours old subject thirteen was hopping, sniffing the air, round and in-between Yugi's ankles in the kitchenette. It would push between his legs as he cooked, arch its back and extend its arms, its legs, straight enough to rub like a cat and purr. It would twirl round the outside, hands scratching along Yugi's pant leg and make that shrill noise in the back of its throat.

"_Shhh,_" Yugi pushed his hair back to make eye contact down at the thing, "wait a minute."

He'd turned back to the stove and, swinging its backside, subject thirteen had tried to jump _up_. It had leapt, hit up into Yugi's knee and already armed with claws had dug its hands and curled its legs round his knee.

Yugi choked, swore, and turning down was ready to put the cat out.

"No!" he ordered, batting at it. "_Down!_"

Gravity was already tugging it down, hands too little to hold on well exactly, but subject thirteen squawked insistently.

It plopped to the tiled floor with a little thump. Yugi froze for half a second worried the impact may have damaged something but then it was up again squawking at him and scratching his leg.

Little monster…

Yugi sighed, frustrated, and leaning he put both arms round it to bring it up to coddle against his chest all the weight into one cocked hip as he tried, helplessly, to get something in his mouth for once. It slumped, snorting thickly, face burying into the groove of Yugi's armpit, tail coiling with the tiny glass bottle cold against Yugi's holding arm.

* * *

Yugi actually got a moment to type, properly, when it fell asleep in a netted ball in his lap. His hairless march hare snored, bearish, and fingers pattering Yugi had seconds enough to try and write a report for Atemu.

If it was as mammalian as Yugi had made it this thing was going to grow fast, was going to start eating solids, was going to start sleeping longer and stretching out. He didn't have much comprehension of what exactly it would look like, deformed and uncomfortable as it sat now. In retrospect, if Yugi had been asked what he thought, at first, it would look like well… frankly he never had an hour long enough to ask himself that. He didn't make any guesses.

It did grow fast though. Yugi was right about that even if he quite failed to predict much else.

It had been strange, alien, to slot subject thirteen in to the lab with him. Yugi's prison now had a conflicting voice. Something he was leashed to, that he couldn't let out of sight, something he kept expecting to die. Something he was disgust by and viciously protective of in the same motion of his hands across the keyboard. He didn't ask himself if he liked it but he never really pushed himself to be impartial. He didn't remember chiding himself for the conditions, everything was necessity.

* * *

Yugi left music on to try and drown some of the impatient squawking. It scampered over the floor, sniffed under the fridge, under Yugi's desk, nibbled chair legs and power chords its teeth were mercifully too small to break yet.

It head butted Yugi's leg, stubborn, and groaning Yugi hadn't really thought. A napkin ended up scrunched in his palm, balled, and tossing it across the tiles Yugi forgot he_ wasn't _dealing with a cat.

It scrambled, all nails on the tiles, and dived after the ball.

Yugi glanced over his shoulder to find subject thirteen nibbling it, kicking it, dancing round it trying to bat it and quietly amused he thanked Christ Atemu had security cameras. He'd need to jot that down.

He heard its weight skid on the white and Yugi had the stove to himself.

A hop, a squirrel chitter _ptt ptt_, and whining a moment later it was tugging at his leg, tugging with a curled little hand yanking his trousers like a child. The whole motion bizarrely turned Yugi around and glancing down he quite lost his voice.

"What?" He murmured, startled.

It whined.

"Where's your ball?" Yugi felt breathless even saying it.

It thumped its back leg and glancing quickly Yugi couldn't quite find it. Under the fridge? Seemed to be the only place it could've gone without the tiny monster following it.

"Did you lose it?" He softened, sighing, shoulders down.

_Whine-whine_.

Yugi bunched another napkin and holding it up between his fingers subject thirteen thumped its back foot _tap-tap-tap-tap_ eagerly. Yugi tossed it down from his feet and diving the thing was scrambling after it already.

Yugi snorted, half smiled.

* * *

At ninety six hours subject thirteen waddled to the end of Yugi's lap, nose on the kitchen table, and twittering ducked its head over the edge to nip at the rim of his toast. Yugi paused, half the meal in hand, and observed the little monster gnawing insistently at the edge of the crust on the plate. Yugi swiped jam off the slice, brought it down near the creature's mouth and two tiny hands curling round Yugi's finger to hold it there subject thirteen licked in short, sandpaper tongue, motions at his bare skin.

Solids it was.

* * *

Yugi threw his arm over the back of the desk chair and felt a little easier before he knew it. Within the fortnight his march hare was a house cat. Pattering around on four elbowed legs like an ape walking on its hands and feet. It was bizarre but graceful. Yugi could throw a tennis ball and it would run after it.

It could also jump onto his desk annoyingly.

Which it did one day, scrapping its back leg in his papers, whining at him and clucking up to thump off the edge of the desk into his lap as Yugi sighed.

"What?" He moaned.

It scratched his chest, kneading in his shirt, and squawked in that particularly demanding way.

"I don't know what you want," Yugi sighed, he'd been mid-sentence with something.

Subject thirteen thumped its back leg.

"Don't you sulk at me."

Whining it scratched his chest and in the back of its mouth, not quite its throat, started squelching. Yugi blinked, tilted, and whining it sucked.

"You want a bottle?" He offered dumbly. He'd rather weaned the thing off them after the first five days when he found solids and milks were quite comfortable.

It slumped and rolled in his lap, twittering, and Yugi wondered if it understood him.

When he had it in his arms, with another bottle full of a nutrient and milk mix, Yugi was almost certain it understood him.

Subject thirteen purred, the warm weight of that growing tail round Yugi's coddling arm, and all at once it was like the thing was tiny padding into Yugi's arm and murmuring. Animals, Yugi noticed, didn't require this kind of intimacy, this kind of attention, this kind of moment. A calf sucked from its mother till it didn't need to anymore and then it stopped on instinct. Human babies wanted the feel of their mother round them, her undivided attention, the familiarity and comfort of a bottle. Subject thirteen didn't need the plastic teat, functioned well on solids, but… it wanted this, it wanted to be held, it wanted to be coddled…

It was too smart, too conscious.

* * *

It didn't quite like Atemu.

It was hesitant, curious, when at almost two weeks the mobster waltzed in as he so often did and whistled through his teeth. Subject thirteen squawked, scattered, and scrambling from gnawing a sacrificed sneaker darted between Yugi's legs underneath his desk. Hiding behind mother's skirts.

"Getting big fast ain't it?" Atemu had a plastic bag in one hand and sauntering over dumped the bag on the desk with one hand while the other slumped mindlessly on Yugi's dazed shoulder.

"Ridiculously," Yugi sighed.

Under the table subject thirteen hissed at his booted legs and quite dismissive Atemu altogether ignored him. Yugi's eyes drifted to the bag but his hand didn't follow. He always expected Atemu to come down with suited men to break his kneecaps.

"It's just doughnuts Mister Mad," the tawny lord scoffed, pulling apart the plastic over Yugi's shoulder to grab one still steaming. "Thought I'd give you a treat while I checked in on our firstborn."

Atemu shouldn't have made those jokes.

Pleasantly relieved Yugi leant for one, cinnamon coated.

"Vitals good?" Atemu took a sloppy bite.

"Perfect," Yugi chewed, "but I'm working on approximations here. It doesn't seem unhappy though. Nothing in the blood tests that seems odd. I'm still trying to figure out what it might be able to do, how big it's going to be but…"

"Probably won't know till the hormones kick in," Atemu dismissed, demonstrating that subtle genius of his. "Puberty's going to be fun eh?"

"Oh god," Yugi moaned quietly, "don't joke. It's already poisonous. Those claws are going to get bigger."

"You seen if it can hunt yet?"

"Huh?" Yugi blinked.

"Give it a rat or a grasshopper or something," Atemu ordered, "see what happens. See what kind of predator it is."

That was actually, surprisingly, a good idea. Yugi nodded, distantly, and realized he was eying his screen with new implications. That would work wouldn't it?

Under the table subject thirteen squawked.

Atemu leant, hand on the back of Yugi's chair and glanced under the table.

"What?" He teased brazenly. "Don't you like being ignored space trooper?"

"'Tem'-" Yugi mumbled under his breath, squashing the sound he arked up unnecessarily at the teasing. He silenced himself, fingers in his own hair as Atemu reached under the table extending his hand.

"Well come on then," he tempted the creature, "come say hi if you're so big and scary."

Yugi heard its back foot thump.

"Oh big tough man," Atemu chuckled, "_come on._"

A whine.

"I know, life's hard ain't it?"

Grumbling, twittering, to Yugi's own gentle surprise he found subject thirteen fumbled out on nailed hands and hopping on its back legs came very close to sniff Atemu's hand. He seemed docile. Did he remember the mobster…?

Atemu's hands came down, hooked under its armpits and hefting pulled the creature up into his arms.

_"Oomph_," he complained, "solid aren't you?"

It clucked, squirming enough to pad its feet into Atemu's chest, tail flickering at ease.

"You got a hard life?" Atemu teased. "Down here getting fat and coddled with Mama? You just wait till you get bigger and whinier. I'm going to make you switch places with me. Then I can sit round here getting spoilt and you can deal with fuckwits."

"_Tem,_" Yugi sighed tightly.

"_Yu_," Atemu teased down.

Yugi coloured, lost his displeasure, and turning back into his palms didn't realize the shortened nonsense had escape his mouth on reflex.

Subject thirteen settled very quickly in Atemu's arms. Let them talk, or mumble into their palms on Yugi's part, leaning up to sniffle the underside of the mobsters jaw. It licked the skin quickly before nestling down. It knew somehow, smelt perhaps, the genes between itself and the illicit human male. Atemu, the alpha male of their pack, held it on his hip, hand on the opposing bone formation as Yugi's inner anatomist traced the lines of Atemu's dress shirt down his torso and they really rather talked about nothing.

Yugi had finished his second doughnut when, huffing, thirteen squirmed a little more obviously in Atemu's arms.

Rolling over the little thing twittered, squeaking low, towards Yugi.

"Someone wants Mum back," Atemu sighed easily, motioning to hand him back as Yugi's arms unlaced readily, unconsciously, to take the creature like it was really their demented young. "I better go anyway."

It nestled down into Yugi's clavicle, yawned, sneezed and seemed to start to daze. It was near a nap.

"Thanks for lunch," Yugi conceded.

Atemu shrugged, didn't care.

"Have fun camper," he blew a kiss over his shoulder as he dissipated.

* * *

At exactly three weeks Yugi found himself arguing into plastic. The small of his back brushed the the counter and simmering dinner bubbling something sickly Yugi had altogether lost his appetite. The lab was so stark, so white, so cold…

"I can't Grandpa," he gritted stubbornly, picking dirt from under his nails. "No, I _know_ that. No one's- my work needs constant supervision-" Lord knew Atemu wasn't exactly going to babysit without cocaine. "My world revolves around more than smoke breaks and vitamin D. I'm_ busy._"

And exhausted, and cold, and fascinated, and spinning out of control…

Yugi should've held on tighter to the real world, gone upstairs and shocked his system clean of the dark, muddled, bog he was buried in. He needed a reminder, stark and visual, that real people didn't live like this. The first time he left the laboratory, before the midnight scramble to the Ukraine, Yugi remembered the shimmering plastic flash of a diaper commercial. He remembered the penetrating, stomach sinking, remembrance of what human offspring looked like. It stung his retinas after almost a year away from the dim of a television screen. To see other human beings, to see the natural order, to see life outside the catacombs Yugi had…

At three weeks, appetite already sickened, Yugi had been hissing into the hand piece.

Subject thirteen had a rat. A fat, stupid, pet store one good enough for laboratory use. It had instinct enough to run and big as a dog by then, imposing nearly, Yugi's little monster had darted skidding under the kitchen table to sink his teeth in. He used that tail of his to hunt. The poison seemed to be increasingly acidic and detrimental as the subject grew. Yugi intended to test the mortality rate soon, in a moment's peace, if that ever came.

The rat screeched, death throes, and shaking its jaw subject thirteen had given an almost primal grumble guttural in his chest. It was more obviously male by then though it had always been to some extent. Diapers off it left its gender stark now, the ever expanding proportions in its body morphing into something more naturalistic.

A smell, sickening, of stomach bile breaking from the rat's intestinal tract distracted Yugi and gagging he turned his nose up. He turned the stove off, everything gone from focus, because he wasn't going to eat now.

"No," he rasped into the phone, "I don't know the woman, why should I? I have stuff_ to do_."

Why did he turn off the swear function in his vocabulary? It wasn't just Grandpa Motou. Yugi had strained at the sound of harsh syllables since subject thirteen had come hissing out into the world slimy and poisonous. It was as if Yugi feared he'd teach a house cat bad manners.

"I'm half way through the biggest project of my li-"

One tiny, human, hand tugged above Yugi's knee.

He froze.

Subject thirteen's eyes had lightened now from beady birthing chamber black to something richer, brighter, coherent and stark. Aubergine blinked up at Yugi's dull focus, the man's lips loose, and pushed up on its back feet subject thirteen stood_ upright_.

On two feet its hands fell into position, elbows by its side, little bony hands curled in Yugi's trousers as it tugged and clucked up at him. It bended at the knee, down then up, whining with the carcass of the half-eaten caramel rat in its mouth.

Yugi let the phone slump in his hand down into his shoulder.

It looked like a child, a real, proper, child; a human toddler if with more adult proportions and awkward jointing. Those big den eyes blinked up less reptilian at Yugi now the tilt of the face made it finally seem human. Yugi could… he spotted the feline outline of Atemu's cheekbones on the creature's face….

He swallowed.

"Grandpa," he bent the phone back up dismissively, "I'm going to have to call you back."

The useless plastic scattered on the counter, Yugi released a noise between his lips and the whole world shifted suddenly to the left like gravity had flipped.

"H-hey," he whispered down fingers falling almost into reach of subject thirteen's shoulders. "What's wrong?"

In a way no one had taught him, in a way he'd never seen, the tiny monster thrust both his hands up, rat stuck in sharp teeth, and hmm'd needily. _Up_. He wanted Yugi's arms.

Just like a toddler, like a little boy, subject thirteen threw his hands up.

Yugi forgot everything, how to move, how to be still, how to know peace… his navel tightened sickeningly behind his shirt, thighs cold and wiry. Terror, amazement, horror… He thought for a moment he couldn't tell Atemu but… there were cameras and why he would hide this was…Yugi didn't know why it should matter that the creature stuck his hands up but somehow it all did.

Subject thirteen rocked on double jointed, lion like, feet with human toes clawed.

"Hnn!" He squawked round the corpse. _Up Mama!_

Yugi trembled but bent round the middle his hands found the familiar grooves of the creature's armpits and hefted the tiny body up onto his hips. A sickening tail swished, toes curled, and curling in taunt arms snugged round Yugi's neck in…

He tasted bile.

It knew how to _hug_.

Yugi held it on his hip. What else could he do?

* * *

It was like a switch had flipped. As easily as it had walked on all fours suddenly subject thirteen was walking upright. Yugi's little man-child…

He climbed onto Yugi's desk instead of jumped, he wrapped his arms round Yugi's knees to sag into him, he sat on Yugi's hip like a human infant getting lankier every day. He could sit on the top of the cabinets, get up there unassisted, and with opposable thumbs began to stick his nose into everything. He had hands, had feet, had eyebrows and lips and tufts of hair thickening on his head. Tennis balls and rats and naps weren't good enough anymore.

Most critically subject thirteen had passed from '_it'_ to '_he_' in Yugi's mind

He was sitting in the sink, feet over the edge, gnawing a lamb shank raw between his teeth as he swished his bare, unhindered, tail in the water warm round him while Yugi put the dishes away. The creature sneezed, Yugi glanced, but when he went right back to chewing Yugi didn't cease his business. It was hard to think of him as the '_thing_' rather than the '_boy' _now. Everything was more dangerous.

He made a noise, a lazy grunt and glancing with his arms up in the cabinet Yugi smiled. Subject thirteen watched, eyes keen, and settled went back to munching his treat. He was so…

He could fall, clumsy, off the kitchen table and not hurt a thing. He wasn't delicate. Oh he'd whine, pull himself up into Yugi's lap and demand to be held but that the creature was so human about it was more intimidating than the ease with which he could fall ten feet and get up spotless.

"Yugi!"

He startled, thought it was the creature cawing his name, but glass in hand Yugi spun to realize Atemu had slunk into the lab again.

"In here!" He called, collecting himself, pushing his hair back from his face.

In the sink his little monster looked curiously to him for answers.

"It's Atemu," Yugi answered carefully, "you remember him don't you?"

Dark aubergine blinked at Yugi sluggishly, teeth twittering over the flesh scrapped bone looking for the last chunks of good meat. His teeth were sharp enough to snap a table leg.

"Hey," Atemu greeted casually, cocking his chin before those smooth burgundy irises of his stumbled over the brat nesting in the sink. "Well look at you! You're huge!"

Subject thirteen blinked, Atemu opened his arms in an approach and with sudden recognition the creature tried to hold the bone in its mouth just with its teeth as it stuck both its arms out to be picked up. Atemu snorted, almost within reach and sighing Yugi ordered;

"Put the bone done first."

Atemu seemed to think Yugi was asking him but as both man and monster turned to him subject thirteen grunted.

"You'll get his shirt dirty." Yugi explained, tone tilting to; _don't sulk at me_.

The mobster's hands fell, eyes hungry, and watched as stubbornly unimpressed subject thirteen tugged off a final pieces of meat and shank in hands propped it down on the counter next to Yugi.

"Thank you," Yugi murmured coyly, turning back to the cupboards.

Thirteen thrust his hands out and blinking Atemu took a long second to recover before, laughing hoarsely, he pulled the sopping wet child up into his arms. Atemu moaned in faux effort at the new weight and sleeves rolled back held the male-youngling on his hip. Like that, like it looked now, subject thirteen really could've been their child.

"Look how big you are," he lilted dumbly, "you're going to be bigger than me at this rate."

"Let's hope not," Yugi mumbled. On hands and feet, on four legs, it could be maybe four feet fully grown but on two legs gods… six, seven, _eight_foot? Who knew?

"Hey," Atemu caught the thing's chin under the curl of his index finger, "can you go get me a pen big stuff?"

Subject thirteen grunted.

Atemu put him down and sniffing, naked and bare, the creature looked to Yugi.

"It's okay," Yugi promised over his shoulder.

It sniffed, turned on double jointed feet and slunk waddling off out of the kitchenette with dull purpose lazy in its eyes. It could follow instructions.

"It's getting smart," Atemu whispered the second it was gone from view, "how smart?"

"I don't know," Yugi mumbled, "I keep testing him but… it's hard to tell. He needs new stimulants; toys. He's getting bored and restless. I can't keep up with him. I had to play hide and seek three times today."

"It knows what we're saying." Atemu rasped dryly, standing stiff.

"Looks like it," Yugi turned to the next plate and sagging found himself still. He just stared at it.

"It'll send you some toys," the mobster brushed down his arm with one warm hand, "anything else?"

"I don't…" Yugi sighed. "I think he needs…." He cringed at the thought, "something_ bigger_ to eat."

"I can do that." Atemu shrugged blandly. "What are you worried about?"

"I don't want to watch him kill a dog or a cat or…"

"Rabbits, foxes, snakes, lizards…" the tanned Adonis shrugged, "what's your poison?"

"I don't know," Yugi sighed, shoulders slumping. "Just…no house pets? Please?"

Atemu didn't, as Yugi expected, tell him to strengthen his stomach rather he squeezed Yugi's elbow one hand drifting round his hip next to pull the smaller's body into his side. Yugi let him, leant half unconsciously into the warmth of another human body and surrendered to whatever brief comfort he was going to get. The future frightened him. He sensed their string, tight, impending retribution.

Atemu kissed his forehead, the tip of his temple, in that same vague mindless way he had after threatening Yugi before the birth.

"You're a genius," he whispered uselessly, distant.

Yugi's head slumped forward, almost… he closed his eyes. It was too much.

Atemu leant then, in the strangest way, and craning closer his secondary hand which had been supporting him on the counter joined the other in the set to have Yugi's hips in his grasp. He moved, in the shift of his weight, behind Yugi his lean pushing the smaller into the hard bite of the rounded granite edge and in a sigh Yugi felt his body heat.

Yugi mind splintered, half knew the action but…

Yugi couldn't bring himself to open his eyes. He couldn't decide in the depths of his chest if this was good or carnal or frighteningly sickening. He stalled, limp, and unable to find the urge couldn't, didn't want to, move.

Atemu leant, chin twisting over his shoulder and pressing those thin, hot, lips pushed searing at the bare junction of Yugi's neck. He shuddered. Atemu's steely fingers squeezed his hips and pulled his weight back into the mobster. Atemu kissed, a flickering half light, hot over Yugi's plush cheek, down the arch of his jaw, a pluck along his neck… sighing into his skin as Yugi's fingers curled in the counter and in the lab like this they were two voiceless monsters unable to really…

Atemu's pelvis, his heat, brushed _firm_ into Yugi as his fingers left indents in the dips of Yugi's hip bones under the hemline of his cotton tee. Atemu was straining Yugi felt it, aroused, and sighing behind his ear the man dragged the tip of thick, slimy, tongue behind the curve of Yugi's ear. He hissed, head leaning back and in that flicker of consent something about Atemu's grip changed.

Sinuous, hot, scarred hands skidded round over Yugi's bare stomach to wrap secure round his navel. Possessive. Yugi's fingers tightened another coil in the counter. Atemu's hand fell, firm and present and strange down over the tight top of Yugi's thigh stroking down and dragging up to the waistline of Yugi's worn jeans. Yugi gasped, felt tripping, groping, fingers tangle slipping under the grip of the denim onto his stomach.

"Ate-"

Yugi was seventeen. Atemu was considerably older. He lost his voice, gave a tiny gasp, as Atemu's hand slipped under the waistline and deep between his squeezed together thighs over the burning, too hot, slickness of Yugi's own arousal.

Atemu hissed, tight in his teeth and almost silent into Yugi's ear. Held the smaller's waist, arched his own hips and his own cock into Yugi with intrinsic intention and biting his lips Yugi bruised his knees together as Atemu's hand, uncaring, stroked between his tight knit thighs.

"We shou-"

Yugi shuddered. Atemu squeezed, ground into him, and silently hidden in plain view Yugi was so painfully aware that their tiny monster could come back any second. This man was practically…but Yugi didn't know him at all… He dug his teeth harder into his bottom lips felt his eyes close again.

Good, bad, frightening and sickeningly gooey-wrong hot-

Clawed feet pattered back over the tiles. Atemu froze, inhaled, and hands slipping finally released Yugi's uncertain body to pretend briskly that nothing had happened. Atemu cocked his head over his shoulder and clucking his tongue began to congratulate his little monster for fetching the required object he then deposited in his breast pocket despite how the creature had chewed on it during the totter back.

* * *

Atemu's toys arrived the next morning in boxes. There were there when subject thirteen woke in bed next to Yugi. He had squawked, pattering back and forth in the hallway, and bouncing on his toes at the end of the bed had tugged the blankets to stir Yugi to the excitement.

Atemu had sent an assortment, broad and educational and shiny-new impressive in thick cardboard boxes and, once he had finished exploring the boxes, subject thirteen had played with them.

* * *

At two months old Yugi had found himself on the floor in his office next to subject thirteen with a stack of alphabet blocks with a dull clipboard slack in his lap.

"Can you spell dog?"

Twittering in that squirrelly way subject thirteen pushed the bright chunks of hollow wood round on the floor.

_D- O- G_

"Good boy," Yugi praised, voice pitching up and cooing the creature was pleased. Yugi's hand drifted through its thick hair, now just like Atemu's, and pulling it in kissed its temple fleetingly. "What's my name?"

_Y- U – G- I_

"How do you spell Atemu's name?" He proffered.

_A- T- E- M- U_

"Yeah," he clucked his tongue, "can you show me another one?"

It swished its tail, thumping it with a thwack against the tiles. Like the rest of him it too had gotten bigger. Yugi couldn't watch him eat in close proximity any more. Watching him hunt chickens, or badgers or anything else was…even on camera… Yugi shuddered and forced a new smile.

A-I-R-P-L-A-N-E

Yugi coughed, laughed.

"You are so smart." He felt breathless.

It grunted and keening in the back of its throat pushed its fingers against Yugi's upper arm.

"What?" Yugi posed gently, squeezing the tiny sharp digits that grew every day.

"_Hnn,_" it pointed to itself, grunting.

"I don't…?" Yugi mumbled, shaking his head. No._ Don't do this to me_.

"_Hnnn,_" it groaned, pointing to itself and then, _humph_-ing, at the blocks.

"You?" He pointed to the creature's little wing boned chest.

It nodded jerkingly.

"What about you?" Yugi swallowed tightly. It whined. "I don't know what you want Sweetie. Show me?"

It gathered up the blocks, turned them over carefully in its hands and propping them down lined them up carefully trying to find the right phrase.

N-

_No, please don't…_

A-M-E

_Name_, it posed looking to Yugi, _what's my name?_

It was self-aware. Like an ape, conscious of self as an entity. Highly intelligent. Dangerous.

Yugi's throat was burning.

"I-I don't…" he coughed, "you don't have one sweetie."

"_Hn,_" it grunted.

"You want one?" Yugi supposed.

It nodded.

"Well…" he laughed breathlessly, "what should your name be?"

It looked down to the splay of plastic and gathering all the blocks together looked to Yugi to help it bring all the final letters into its little reach. It could've been six now or seven if it had been human.

It made two piles, tossed letters one way and with both hands placed individual blocks to the other side with supreme, little boy, focus. _A, T, Y, M, U, E, G, I…_

Yugi's stomach locked behind his navel. Understood.

Moving them, it twittered.

Y…I

It tilted, looked to the others in its pile and grasping carefully scrapped the shiny plastic on the tiles in what seemed to Yugi gut splitting slow motion. Yugi didn't want to watch this, didn't want to know this thing was… could love him, could… he felt a sting inside him.

Y- A- M- I

It looked to Yugi, cooed curiously, tail swishing. Yugi forced himself to smile past the glimmer glassing up his eyes.

"Heh," he laughed brokenly, "Yami?"

It purred gutturally.

"Yami's a good name." Yugi decided. "You like Yami?"

It nodded.

"Okay," he consented, "you hungry?" His hands came out to wrap the child up even though he was too heavy to really carry now. Yugi had to hold him for a second. "Let's go have cake."

* * *

1 I'm certainly not a doctor or a scientist or anything like that. This is all based off knowledge I have to the best of my ability.  
2 Some inspiration for this came from the epic sci-fi movie _Splice_ which is amazing.  
3 The letters Yami picked to choose his name from were _**A**_TE_**M**_U and_**Y**_UG_**I.**_I loved the idea of the experiment choosing its name as a composition of the names of the only two people it knows; essentially its Mother and Father.

**Part 2:** the second half is completely written and finished~ I expect to release it on about Saturday next week but depending on if I have to move apartments and how long editing takes it may not come out for a fortnight. (A week is more likely right now!)

Hope you enjoyed!


	2. Chapter 2

"**Suspects and Subjects"  
Part 2/2**

**Summary:**Yugi Motou wants to make the discovery of the century. Mobster Atemu Sennen will let him do whatever he wants on premise. Their first project spirals out of control when culture, science and a creature called Yami coincide.

**Theme Song:** _Disintegration _by Monarchy

**Warnings:** dubious consent, graphic sex, descriptions of violence and experimentation

**Author Note:** lots of smut in this part and a resolution to all the tension~

* * *

Yugi showered, still, in the quarantine tank but by then with better supplies. He didn't remember when exactly the shampoo and conditioner manifested downstairs but it had been there long enough for the sight to be normalized by the time Yami had hair to wash. From a squelching toddler he stood, Yugi remembered, with his head at Yugi's navel. Big enough for Yugi rub his fingers, the slick suds, down into the smaller scalp cupping bubbles away from Yami's eyes.

Yugi had bathed him, when tiny, in the kitchen sink or the laboratory trough. He had watched the little monster, as a march hare, at four or so days paddle little paws in the water and slosh about till Yugi stopped worrying the ugly tiny thing would drown.

Suddenly Yami had a name, seemed a child, and was different from that pet-creature Yugi had made. The images were connected yet faltered. Yugi washed a little boy's hair but its tail still wrapped back round Yugi's knee for comfort subconsciously.

By then they had a bed, Yugi remembered. Like the shampoo he couldn't recall the exact day this and that appeared given he didn't make notes of things so insignificant. Even if he dragged his files up from the eastern European bunker or the Swiss Bank tray they sat in now he only knew when various bits and pieces of furniture manifested from the size and shape Yami had been at the time.

Yami slept differently as he elongated, up against Yugi's chest, nuzzling, knees all curled and arms locked round him and by then Yugi was so used to being clung to he endured it to sleep deeper.

He murmured once in the morning, or what must've been morning given there was no such thing as daylight;

"Do you want your own bed?"

Yami shook his head into Yugi's chest.

"Hmm, kay," Yugi yawned. He didn't know how long it would be till Atemu took him away to start trying the creature with orders and weapons and left Yugi to make a dozen more to ship off to Palestine, Serbian or whatever crash dictatorship wanted Yugi's bio-weapons.

* * *

"I'll be there in a little while," Yugi promised, "I need to finish this."

Yami whined, mewed, tugging at his sleeve over the arm of Yugi's desk chair. Given another moment he'd be on the desk, sitting in front of the computer, squawking.

"Go to bed," Yugi ordered gently, pushing back strands of hair from the off-tinged face and not quite human textured skin. "Go to sleep. I'll be there soon."

Yami huffed, sensed he was losing and pivoting trudged miserably off to bed in the only scraps of clothing Yugi could convince him to wear.

He didn't like pants, constricted that swishing possum tail of his. Neither did he really like the fresh smelling new cottons Atemu sent down. Yugi was trying to wean him onto to the idea before he got too big for Yugi to attempt to force it. He didn't know either if, by then, Atemu would have stolen Yami to face the big bad world. For today all the success Yugi had managed was convincing Yami to wear an old thread bare tee shirt of his that covered Yami's groin like a skirt and hung heavy off one pointed, strong, shoulder.

He sighed, heard the click of the door down the hall and knew the babe would be out before Yugi had finished his next sentence. He was tantrum inclined at this hour; over-tired after chasing badgers, ugly things badgers worse when they were dead on Yugi's kitchen floor.

The computer screen, humming, burnt his eyes and leaning back Yugi slackened. A parent's moment of peace, a parent's sense of fear… he pursed his lips and felt the band in his gut. He'd so given up by then to whatever might happen. Knew nothing except to agree to being mother. He shouldn't have. He would've saved himself a lot of heartbreak.

He door on his opposing side whooshed with the ping of a security key. Yugi had been asked to put his security key in a safe recently now Yami was bigger.

Yugi spun a little on the plastic pivot of his seat, arm over the back rest, and soothed to drop his shoulder spotted Atemu cocking his chin in greeting. Yugi nodded, almost smiled weakly, and considered how bizarre it was that every time that door opened he expected men with guns (either FBI or Atemu's own men) to strip him out of his rabbit hole. Yet Yugi never remembered tensing. He was resigned that if they came to kill him he wouldn't be able to do much about it so he may as well save himself the panic.

"He asleep?" Atemu whispered. He coughed then, in that way he did when he slipped to say _'he'_ instead of '_it_'. Atemu was conscious of distancing himself, so much healthier than Yugi.

"Yeah," Yugi murmured softly.

"Hard day?"

"He's been cranky all afternoon," he shrugged, "but it's alright."

"How big is it today?"

"Almost my chest," Yugi sighed ruefully, "I can't pick him up anymore."

"It's fast," Atemu exhaled. "What are we up to, five months?"

"I think," he rubbed the hollows of his eyes, "I've lost count. If it wasn't for the timers…"

"You need a vacation."

"Where?" Yugi rolled his eyes, almost resentful as his hand fell into his lap. "_How? _Who am I going to leave him with? Are you going to look after him? Get a sitter with a confidentiality waver? He's poisonous. He could kill someone in a tantrum."

"_Afterwards_," Atemu grunted tightly, irritable. "When it's gone. Before we make the rest."

"Before_ I_ make the rest," he clarified tartly.

"Whatever," the mobster dismissed, slinking forward. "I actually came to be nice."

"Oh god," Yugi didn't like the sound of that, "what happened?"

"Happy Birthday," Atemu answered, inclining to lean over him at the desk.

"Really?" He blinked, dazed. "Already?"

"June fourth, right?" He shrugged. "Unless you lied to me?"

"No," Yugi ran his hands through his hair, "_shit_…where'd the year go?"

"I think I lost a decade once," Atemu rested into the desk, hooking his ankles.

"Hmm," he ruminated, "thanks."

"Don't thank me yet," he fished into his pocket and pulled out a flask, "you're eighteen."

"Pfft," Yugi snorted. "_No._ He's going to wake me up at seven. No booze in the lab with my little monster."

Chuckling Atemu sighed to drop the silver weight back against his hip and resting into one hand made something of a delicate spin on the place, bending. Yugi's chin came out of his palm, knees crossed under the desk, and he saw it before-

Contact.

Epidermis on epidermis sung his inner biologist but eyes fluttering Yugi found he froze at the lulling press of Atemu's burning lips unexpectedly on his. A stutter in his chest, coiled confusion, want and fear and need shambling for a focus. Atemu drew back.

"Come here," he offered his ringed palm.

In a weird way, suddenly, Yugi was in a trance. Yugi stood, hesitantly, and taking Atemu's hand let the man tug them closer. Face to face, chest to chest, Yugi's hands found the grooves of his elbows while Atemu's found the arches of his hips.

"What are you doing?" Yugi whispered, fingers twisting in his rolled up sleeves.

"I want to play house with you." He shrugged, soft, quiet, not totally himself. Bumping Yugi's hips, store door knock, into his casually and nearly unintended.

Did Yugi want to?

_Go upstairs_, Yugi could feel himself hiss at the memory like curdled milk, _go upstairs. Please. God please, don't…_

Atemu Sennen used to get beaten. He had a rough idea of romance that didn't involve a pay check or expire after an hour. Yugi knew that now but he only half guessed it then. Atemu didn't really know how to engage, sexually, with someone he wanted to respect. Their noses touched and neither of them quite understood what should come next. This wasn't a romance movie. The cinema kiss wasn't the first port of call.

Atemu's hips pressed Yugi back into the desk, air tightened, the mobster flexed fingers more accustomed to iron knuckles than tenderness. Yugi squeezed his arms, one arm up round his shoulders, palming down Atemu's neck and over his firm pectorals as Atemu's knees bumped in between his. Yugi swallowed, felt the solid weight of Atemu's thighs between his and holding him in the physical manifestation of a '_rock and a hard place_' the taller flushed them firm against each other.

Yugi turned his face down, brown against the man's nose because eye contact felt…

His thighs spread, still standing just, Yugi felt trussed up and flickered between impulses of pushing the man away or just bending back and letting it all happen. Hips met, denim and dress pants brushed almost pleasing but not really satisfying more just accentuating the idea of something forming.

One dark hand brushed, uncomfortably, between them and twisting popped out Yugi's top button. It was fast but at the time, panting softly, it was… If Yugi ever heard the word '_baby-mama_' from Atemu ever again these days he'd slap him so hard he'd…Atemu's fondled with the second button, almost got stuck, and then zipper parting the tension round Yugi's waist still didn't evaporate.

He curled his fingers in the other's shirt, murmured, and oddly breathless with arousal Atemu dipped his hand between layers of fabric to palm along Yugi's arousal through cotton. Yugi sighed, high, tiny and clipped. Atemu's hand sunk inside to press along one pinned open thigh, then up, then around…

"_Hnn_…" Yugi slumped his head down into his neck as Atemu's hand plucked under his waist band over his backside and squeezed.

Atemu pushed their hips together, they hissed. A bubble of poison, an injection of sharp heat, the man squeezed, Yugi grasped his shoulder and they ground up together.

Yugi squirmed, pulled himself up by the elder's shoulders and coming back to the surface to mutter face to face;

"Can I…?" He sighed.

Atemu drifted into a sound, almost a moan and hand skating free over Yugi's skin gathered up one of the smaller's wrists from his shoulder to direct down his navel.

Yugi fumbled, couldn't seem to find the tiny black button and struggling finally managed to bury his fingers out of sight. Atemu hissed, tightened the hold around him like a Spartan and quaking Yugi bit the corner of his slightly askew bottom lip. He'd never… Well he'd never done much of anything but he didn't feel in anyway virginal or innocent dragging his fingers over the beaded, slickening, tip of Atemu's arousal. Quite the opposite he thought of sewers, rats, the plague and a couple of bad, drunk, demons hissing old incantations at each other. It wasn't how he pictured himself.

Yugi's fingers slid, twittered through thick dark curls and back to trace his fingertips along the leaking slit. Atemu squeezed his hips, pulled him almost too close to move and hand stuffing messily, slipped his hand very suddenly over the rim, tight, skin of Yugi's entrance.

"_Ha_…" it came out a little too loud. Yugi froze there like they were in an elevator shaft.

Atemu circled, calloused blunt finger tips rubbing against the sensitive bunch of skin in a way that tightened Yugi's fingers and all the knots of anxiety behind his belly.

"Don't stop," Atemu breathed against his nose, an order.

Yugi closed his eyes and wanted, then, to close his thighs as well. It was the most bizarre sensation of being helpless. Hot, serpentine, heat in his belly fell over into mindless groping to ease his own tension. Did he want this? He was never sure.

Yugi stroked, slow rocking motions as Atem half undulated, rasping and hissing, into his fingers. The mobster's hands stayed on him, fingers rubbing in pointed little motions at Yugi's most intimate entrance. He never pushed in, it would've hurt dry, but the inhibition with which Atemu touched him was a warning shot; intentions. Yugi felt focused, distracted, by those ideas, by Atemu's thighs between his, Atemu's dripping cock throbbing against his fingers.

Yugi's lips dried, fallen open, and eyes lulling shut was so intent on the blistering points of his skin he bizarrely forgot about the rest of his body.

How did they even end up that way the first time?

Atemu pressed, applied pressure, and reminded Yugi of his presence as the he fumbled. Yugi almost bit his tongue, head slumped, and spine tight ran his fingers to hook round the mobster's hips.

Yugi slipped down, the back of his head almost knocked the edge of the desk and knees on the tiles caught the scent of ammonia and chloride; all those hard medical cleaning products that under the surface mingled the scent of Yugi's nursery. What was he even…?

Atemu's fingers curled, one set through his hair, the other grasping Yugi's hand on the mobster's hip. Yugi's secondary hand was _occupied_. He leant, had no idea what he was doing, but it was base, mortal, instinct from the dawn of time to open his gooey mouth a little wider and lick.

Atemu's digits tightened in his hair, hurt in a razor tug, but loosening he hissed out a half-formed apology that suggested to Yugi that hadn't been intended. Did he really want this so bad?

His tongue dragged over the translucent drop leaking from the tip, fingers flexing in coarse curls. He caught the taste, sweat, bitterness, tang, and new enough medicine to know the exact genetic composition of what he was… ingesting? Yugi was this odd juxtaposition of physician and virgin. Like an alien species regarding another. It didn't feel wrong though and his eyes fluttered shut and he was half gone before he realized he was dragging his tongue wetly over the veins of the skin, over Atemu.

"Oh _Yu_…"

Yugi thought Atemu was on the tip of saying something, glanced up, before he realized it was that joking nickname Atemu had used mockingly once that Yugi had otherwise totally forgotten. It suggested something to him. The mobster madman payed more attention than Yugi gave him credit for.

Somehow that, that revealed focus, made Yugi want him.

He leant, in something of a dreamless, tranced, rush and lips parting, fingers coiling, took the head into his mouth. Atemu moaned, guttural, sound spreading through his chest with that same wildfire intensity with which he did everything and coiled his fingers hard against Yugi's scalp.

Yugi felt the skin on his tongue, the taste he couldn't quite escape from as his knees flexed under him. Atemu began to drip on his tongue in hot, thick, drops. Yugi's fingers squeezed, one set on the pointed hip peeking out from under the dress pants, the other stroking from the curls up the shaft.

His eyes fell shut, he forgot, he circled the skin and found he liked the feel of how jets of melted metal surged between the arteries of his thighs. His knees settled astride to hold him up and Yugi liked the part, the strain, in his muscles. Atemu sighed down on him and sinking into the feeling of dazed gooey metallic warmth Yugi slid thicker, firmer, skin into his mouth.

His lips stretched, Atemu hardened with a groan, and Yugi felt acutely the way the man's cock opened him up, felt heavy in his mouth…

He was drifting but it was so good in those seconds.

Atemu's hips bucked, purposeful and steady trying to persuade Yugi to take a little more and half-spluttering, grip flexing on his hip, Yugi tried to spread his jaw to accommodate the girth. The ache was almost painful, he couldn't hold it long, and sinking away he drew till he only had the head on his tongue. It was thick with pre-cum, the taste intensified and then…

Yugi's eyes had fallen shut at some point, he vaguely remembered letting it happen, but the next few moments of wet sucking, licking, up and down Atemu's cock faded out of focus. Yugi remembered more clearly the shark intake of breath that was Atemu's, the guttural pulse of his throat, primal vaguely inhuman noises…

Atemu's fingers fisted in his hair, smoothed down his neck, purring and hushing Yugi thought he heard him murmur something. Yugi still wasn't sure if he liked this, if he wanted this, if he should've been doing this but he was under a wave of hormones. There was something vaguely entrancing about the taste. He floated.

"_Ah fuc-_"

Atemu's hips jolted, Yugi's nails dug into the skin and shuddering through a hiss Yugi heard Atemu's voice break. He perceived the change and was very nearly, bizarrely, satisfied by it before the first jet of cum hit his tongue. Yugi cringed back on reflex, Atemu's fingers razor tight and shivering he was rendered incapable of slipping the cock out of mouth. Another thick hit of cum, Atemu purring, and forced to feel it Yugi was overcome by the filthy, previously unknown, compulsion to swallow.

So he did.

Atemu rasped, swore, continued dripping just at the sensation.

It wasn't pleasant but the whole act of it made Yugi hard. Bitter, honey thick, sliding sluggishly down his throat under effort.

Something in that gave, changed, and pulling hard Atemu handled Yugi clumsily back onto his feet. Yugi was still hard, squished against the bigger body, and fingers squirming back into his hair Atemu kissed him hard. Yugi grasped, sighed, felt a headache coming on and the bitterness of the aftertaste but dismissed it for the burn of the mobster's lips. His thighs tingled, insides squirmed, and with that little injection of heat Atemu had, once again, sliced at something stable inside Yugi. The purity of his inner virgin sundered.

They half fell back into the desk, Yugi's hip hit the wood and stumbling they had to find their feet without stopping the wet procession of tiny, biting, kisses. Yugi's fingers scraped his cheek, Atemu pressed his waist, groped over his ass tightly and arms pinned between them Yugi had lost focus.

Something beeped as Yugi hit into the desk again and stalling he twisted his head away from the kiss, panting, to find it. It was a button on his watch, something silly, and blinking dizzily Yugi realized as he grabbed it, Atemu kissing wetly up the column of his neck, that some forty minutes had elapsed.

He held the plastic in his hand, that easy to clean rubber band that held nothing infectious, and blinked at the watch face as his heart caught up with is head. Atemu's mouth licked, sweet swipes, behind his neck and murmuring in his throat Yugi had to push at him weakly.

"Tem," he gave out, the man's teeth against his neck. "I need to go to bed. He'll be upset if he wakes up and I'm not there..."

Atemu gave a weaker kiss, seemed to sober and standing from his hunch, still glassy, wiped weakly at his mouth.

"Yeah," he nodded, panting. "Right."

They were still locked round each other. Yugi brushed his own face, eyes sinking and clavicle cold as his fingers idled on Atemu's. In soft pause, gentle motions, they unpeeled and as it happened Yugi became exhausted.

Yugi zipped his jeans, arousal insistent but waning and tucking himself back in Atemu still drew his attention even flaccid. Yugi knew now how his cock tasted and there was…Yugi felt himself colour sharply, pushed at his hair and Atemu squeezed his limp hand.

"Night," he whispered.

"Yeah, night," Yugi flexed his own grip letting their eyes meet for a second.

Yugi didn't do much after midnight aside from swallow, in more ways than one, and slumping up in bed let their little monster squirm nestling into him while his tremulous thighs ached. Everything was heavy, everything was hot, and exhausted he drudged into unconsciousness before Yami's unaware squirms really pushed against his stomach.

* * *

Yugi's hair had a tendency to clump, tangling, from doing very little. He kept a comb on his desk to this day. So it was hardly any work to pick up the brush on his desk, grasp Yami's shoulder as he darted past and drag him close enough to work out a knot in the creature's new, thick, hair.

"Hey, sweetie," Yugi muttered, "you know…"

He paused.

He didn't trust this angle, the night before was still on his tongue bitterly and it made him want to say strange things. Carefully he turned the sharp eyed thing round, took its hands and brought their faces very close till purring, Yami butted their foreheads. Yugi broke his smile.

"You know you can't use that tail of yours, alright?" Yugi had never tried to explain this. He didn't know if he should.

Yami grunted, perplexed, upturning his face.

"Cause, you know this?" Yugi held his hand out and both of Yami's in the opposing palm the creature blinked lazily before flickering the tip of his tail into Yugi's hand so the geneticist could scrape the barbed black end. "It's got venom in it. It could kill me."

A low, hoarse, sound erupted in the back of Yami's throat. His little hands clenched.

"So even if you're mad, I need you to be gentle," Yugi murmured. "You're getting bigger. You might even get bigger than me. I made sure when you were little to be careful with you so I didn't hurt you. I need you to to the same thing for me when you get big. Okay?"

Yami butted their foreheads. Yugi didn't want fear but he was already worried himself. He might as well be honest.

Yami whined, pulled his hands free and twittering with his teeth threw two heavy arms round Yugi's neck.

"Shhh, hey, shh," Yugi squeezed, lips against his cheek. "Shh, everything's okay. I just want you to know. It's so we don't have an accident. That's all. Shhh, Mama's here…"

Why'd he say that?

Yugi caught it out of his lips but it was gone before he could reel it back and Yugi almost cringed. _Damn it_. That was about mistake… Yugi had lost count. It was in the early hundreds. Yugi shouldn't have mentioned the barb or the neurotoxin either. Maybe then Yami wouldn't have…no, he would've known. A snake knows intrinsically that it's venomous doesn't it? At least on some level?

Yugi held him, his little monster, and the scar along his forearm from specimen one ached.

* * *

Yami was up to Yugi's clavicle suddenly when slumping onto the cold floor he squawked slow and unpleasant. Yugi glanced from the desk, tilted round his screen and legs pulling in then stretching out Yami squirmed onto his back with another deep chested Labrador groan.

"You okay kiddo?"

He was restless, jointed feet flexed till his clawed toes scrapped the seamless floor and little fingers pressing Yami rubbed grunting, a fat lizard, at the hollow of his cheek along the curve of his jaw.

"Hey," Yugi skidded the wheeled chair back, skimming out from behind the desk. "What's wrong baby?"

Yugi didn't wear his lab coat anymore. It was all too easily informal as he sunk onto his thighs on the floor by Yami's side and took the child's- _creature's_ jaw in his cupping hands. Yami looked to him, opened his lips soundlessly and rolled the muscles till Yugi felt his jaw pop a little. His brow furrowed under Yugi's ghosting fingers and scrunching up his face he gave a rolling growl down the throat.

"Does it hurt?"

Yami nodded; _herumphed_.

"Open your mouth," Yugi leant over him trying not to obscure the light overhead and opening wthe creature let his lanky legs slump lazily, fatly, on the floor. "Little wider baby…"

Yami did, Yugi felt his jaw move though his fingers barely touched the off-hew skin and pressing down gently he felt the shape of the bone tilting it in his hands.

"_Ow_…" Yugi whispered, cringing.

His gut turned.

Yami's gums inflamed he could see the canines, the lines of incisors, seemed a little sharper. Teething? Again? But he was so much bigger now. Yugi's head swam, tried to compress the details without letting uncertainty fill his features and stroking through the creature's hair he pressed the gums through the cheek. He didn't like putting his hands in Yami's mouth.

Yami grumbled, snorting deeper and turned his head in Yugi's hands lips slumping back together.

"Up you get," Yugi hefted himself back to his felt, tugging at the creature's scrawny upper arms hooking into the familiar joints of his arm pits to try and entice the too-big baby-body up. Jointed feet twisting on the tiles Yami complied.

They stood, Yami's arms hooked stubbornly round his waist and slumping in the creature's youngling head slumped, burrowing, into Yugi's clavicle.

"I know, it hurts," Yugi consoled stroking through his hair. Yami squeezed, nestled, wanted comfort of a human level and patting his back Yugi tried to hustle him back into sluggish motion. "It's okay, let's go get you something, hmm?"

Yugi convinced him to move but sullen now Yami refused to detach from his hip, leaning into it, as they waltzed. Yugi managed, at last, down the hall to put him in a padded office chair in one of the many med rooms when spotting the cupboard Yugi pushed to untangle him gently.

"Sit down," he instructed.

Yami grunted.

"I need to get you something for your mouth sweetie," Yugi promised, "just sit for a sec."

A gentle stroke was needed before finally slumping Yami slouched like a despondent schoolboy into the office chair. Yugi reached, had to arch on his tiptoes, and finding the top shelf scrapped down something he hadn't used in months. The little packet of gel fit snugly in his hand and falling back to the balls of his feet Yugi bent back to Yami.

The creature sniffed, shoulders lax, and for today Yugi had only convinced him into boxers and a ridiculous old Zeppelin shirt but it was better than nothing.

"Can you put this on your gums for me?" Yugi unscrewed the cap.

Yami held out his hands, leaning up, and squeezing out a dollop onto his clawed fingers Yugi portioned it out. The silly little thing looked distant, thoughtful, as opening his mouth he slipped the digits in messily to scrape the gel over the insides of his mouth.

He flinched, sighed a little, and hand coming back out looked to Yugi.

"Little more?"

Yami nodded.

He dabbed, Yami rubbed and hands eventually falling into his lap the creature blinked thick aubergine to Yugi.

"That any better kiddo?"

Sniffing up, priggishly, Yami nodded. Yugi patted over his head and slotted the gel into his pocket for later.

"You want to come sit with me?" Yugi offered.

Yami nodded miserably.

"Okay," he smiled, "why don't we read something?"

Another sullen, curt, jerk of the head.

* * *

Yami fell, head into his lap, legs slumping limp on the mattress and uncrossing his thighs Yugi flipped back the leathery pages. Brand new, freshly printed, it was something vague Yugi didn't quite remember. He thought, actually, it was _Treasure Island_ but he wasn't entirely sure this far ahead. He was never entirely sure if Yami listened, if Yami understood, but he supposed he did.

Yami was heavier, bigger, stretching out and the idea his teeth were changing made Yugi uneasy. The male thing drew its legs up, curled in and burrowing his face into Yugi's knee hid from the light till his breathing steadied. Yugi's voice drifted off dry after thirty minutes, checking the time, one hand letting the book rest on the bed while the other rubbed down Yami's tense back and when his gaze returned the little monster raised its head. Snorting, smiling, Yugi pulled the book back up, opened his lips and Yami's face disappeared back into his jeans.

They were moments Yugi couldn't steal back, couldn't recreate.

Yami squirmed up onto his elbows eventually, face tight, and rubbed his jaw irritably.

"Is it aching?"

He nodded.

They reapplied the cream and by early afternoon Yugi was giving him ice cream afraid the usual gnaw of a bone might inflame the issue of the pain. He turned to the sink for one moment, fetching himself something and turning back found Yami chewing the spoon weakly between the back rows.

He almost said something but, weakened, settled for;

"That feel any better?"

Distracted, Yami nodded sloppily and munched groves into the silverware. He couldn't snap solid silver yet, not like the table leg, but Yugi was beginning to wonder.

* * *

Yami lay into Yugi's chest and chewed steadily most of the night. His restlessness, his twist, kept himself up as well as his caretaker. Yugi slipped in and out of consciousness, rubbed his back with every flicker of awareness and arms pinned between their sides Yami held himself very close increasingly uncomfortable.

* * *

Yugi scarified three spoons and a leather boot (utterly ruined) till eventually the pain seemed to peter off. Yami scratched his neck propped on a med cot and leaning into his arms Yugi looked over him.

"Do they still hurt?"

Yami looked to him, keener again, and shook his head.

"That's good," Yugi smiled and, finally settled, Yami smiled back rubbing at his eyes. "You want a nap in a little while maybe? You didn't sleep much last night."

Yami sniffed, grunted, seemed undecided.

"Let's have a look," Yugi raised his hand, "open?"

Rubbing under his nose one final time Yami spread his lips and parted his jaw wider.

Yugi tried, valiantly, to find a doctor's face over the knot that yanked inside his stomach. Yami's legs swung, bored, dangling off the floor as holding his cheek, thumb brushing his lower lip down, Yugi exposed his teeth better.

Bigger, sharper, longer the glimmering set of whites seemed too big for his mouth.

"Close your teeth for me kiddo?"

Yami pressed them together and pointed tips fell sharply into two perfect, solid, rows. They were big, so big, hardly human and all predator. Yugi swallowed.

"Hey, you think you could help me out with a few things today?"

Yami's nose wiggled, liked the sound of focus, attention, and nodded dumbly.

* * *

It took Yugi only twenty minutes to find and calibrate the equipment.

"Right; bite this as _hard as you can_. Okay?" Yugi offered the little piece to him and taking it Yami squeezed it roughly between perfectly razor rows of incisors utterly unperturbed by the sharpness of his own grasp.

The readings spiked in the sensors, Yugi patted his knee for the creature to hold it and pressing down the button Yugi paused the number.

"That's it, we're good," Yugi smiled letting Yami relax as he offered his hand. "Here, give me that."

The mauled pad came back into his palm and the read out sat blaring at him. Yugi pivoted in the desk chair, patted the calculator, and lips falling apart in thoughtful flashes of whispers murmured the numbers. BFQ measured in pressure versus mass of the animal.

181.

Yugi swallowed. That was, in layman's terms, a set of jaws, a bite, stronger than a jaguar's 137. He made a note of it in Atemu's report.

Atemu emailed him, for the first time, after that report:

_Put the little monster to bed and I'll come down_.

* * *

Yugi tried not to rise incredulously to his feet as the security door whooshed open. Atemu looked every bit himself and something in Yugi lurched, very suddenly, to be held. He fought the instinct but must've seemed rattled or else Atemu had the same impulse because four strides past the vault door Atemu turned his chair and took his elbow.

He pulled Yugi up, or Yugi stood, either way in a consensual motion Yugi was up in his arms and Atemu was snug fast round him. Yugi's hands fisted on his biceps, Atemu's palm came flush into the small of his back and Yugi was instantaneously cold.

"What's wrong?" Atemu murmured.

Yugi shook his head.

"He's getting big."

He nodded, head slumping weakly into Atemu's waiting, firm, shoulder. His nails dug, unconsciously, into the ripple of the crisp shirt.

"It hormonal yet?"

"I don't think so," Yugi whispered.

"Keep an eye on it," Atemu ordered, half rocking them in the stillness of the stance. "Email me. We can vault it."

"No," he shook his head stubbornly as his heart broke, "it's okay. We don't need to. He's fine, I'm just edgy."

"It starts making outbursts we're putting it in a tank," Atemu whispered, "you can finish the obs that way."

Yugi burned. This was his, his firstborn almost, his…his _baby_…the image came down on him shatteringly hard. He didn't want Yami taken, didn't want him away, the whole concept of separation before that moment of time, that inevitable end, was jarringly painful to sense. It was an edge that plied a little too hard into Yugi's heart when he was aware of it as if the notion made him push against it. Still in only one outburst, in just five minutes, Yami could kill him now.

"It'll be fine." He promised. He'd lie at that point.

"It's docile with you," Atemu shrugged, rubbing blandly up his spine. "You're Mama."

"Yeah," Yugi murmured with a weak, broken, laugh under his breath.

"It'll be fine," Atemu parroted.

"Need to start bringing me doughnuts." He joked.

"Bought you better," he answered stiffly drawing the flask out of his pocket, "have a drown of this."

Yugi hesitated but took the silver in hand. He already ached, he was already afraid, and unscrewing the cap in Atemu's arms considered the smell of the thing. It had a hard, unpleasant, tang. He sniffed, made a mistake and tipping the tip back took heavy, fast, swallows. Two, three, four… the thing lightened. It had a rushing, horrible, taste that burned his throat viciously as Atemu rubbed the small of his back.

He fell forward, exhaled heavily, and taking the flask off him Atemu emptied the last three swallows. It might've been because he needed them or it might just have been because he didn't want Yugi to empty the whole thing and take it all to the head.

Yugi slumped into him, closed his eyes, and fingers digging up his back wanted everything easier. His throat was uncomfortably rancid, stripped, but he didn't want to leave to remedy it.

Atemu propped it, the flask, on the desk behind them and then lips hard rocked up in a surge to him.

Pheromones were a thing, Yugi read about them, and it all equivocated to the human brain trying to entice two animals breed. They made him forget common sense. Or maybe it was the thrum of too much strong alcohol hitting his system and depressing his brain. It was a depressant after all; killed inhibitions and softened clarity, caused missteps in perception and weight. That was, reducibly, why Yugi leant so strong into Atemu as the mobster's fingers scrunched all the way up his shoulders the salt of Irish liquor burning their breath.

The brain responds to symmetry, it denotes healthy genes, and shapes the entire human idea of attraction based on genetic familiarity. Knowing that changes a moment. Yugi knew Atemu only smelt good, rich, as his hands sunk down the man's neck because Yugi could smell the gene compatibility. There were verified test notes on it using gym shirts and socks that stripped out the flesh from every flouncy love story ever written.

Yugi knew the only reason he liked the slip of Atemu's tongue slick into his mouth was because that thrill that ran up his spine was actually timed endorphins. The brain releases a wave of them during French kisses because the interplay of saliva is a safe way to share antibodies for varying diseases between humans.

Atemu hooked his hand under Yugi's knee, hiked it up, and in the school door knock of their hips hefted Yugi a little up against the desk. The sheets rumpled, crackled, like dying twigs and toes flexing Yugi stood a little taller his fingers threaded through Atemu's hair, down his neck, over his muscled shoulders. Leather, metal, Atemu tasted vaguely like blood as his tongue weaved against Yugi's and it obscured the burn of the liquor shooting like a lethal injection to Yugi's brain fuddling everything.

It wasn't a small flask and Atemu never took anything gentle. It was made for sipping, shots, not deep, starving, swallows Yugi had taken as if he was in his death throes. He needed it, it supressed the panic.

Atemu pushed, Yugi was dazed enough to comply and stumbling his hands fell back to support himself because Atemu's arms were too busy lifting his legs trying to put him on the desk.

Yugi's ass slid over the paperwork, Atemu's hands parted his knees, prowled in and kissing Yugi's spine fell back into the most comfortable position available. The desk wasn't wide enough, Yugi's shoulders hung off the edge, his head lulling unsupported into space and upside down his already sickened head spun as Atemu licked, nipping, over his navel tween spread legs.

The mobsters scarred fingers slid over his sides. Everything was sloppy to Yugi's memory, slushing, as his hand lulled stupidly by his mouth.

He remembered it wasn't the most delicate, the sweetest, time they copulated but it was the first. Atemu pulled his jeans off a little hard, jerking clumsily in his own feverish desire to be totally entrenched inside Yugi. The motion lurched Yugi, the way Atemu yanked his hips up made him feel like he'd fall from the desk and sliding hit his head on the tiles. His hands grasped, blindly, for the opposing rim of the desk top to hold onto for purchase.

Atemu's hand held his thigh too hard, now bare, and head back world spinning Yugi closed his eyes to hear the guttural rip of the condom between the mobster's teeth. Yugi's purred, soft and lost, soothed.

Atemu hissed, Yugi forced his shoulders up and watched blankly, hungry in a strange alien way, as the man smoothed the wrap over his freshly aching cock. Atemu dragged him down by the crook of his knee, made Yugi's head spin, his stomach lurch. Atemu bent, scrapped like a digging squirrel in the drawers of Yugi's desk till he found the medical gel or was it the extra hand sanitizer? Yugi couldn't quite remember and neither could he.

Yugi hiccupped, groaned back brokenly, at the practiced twist of Atemu's finger digging into him. It was a whoosh, slapped the air out of his diaphragm from blissful, calm, normalcy but tipsy Yugi didn't tense, clench, properly. He slumped, let it happen, found it wickedly intrusive. Instinct dictated to him, in a ghost whisper, to hold the edge of the desk tight in one hand and slip the fingers of the other over his aching arousal. So he did.

"_Na-ha_," he coughed.

Atemu was slumbering in his pace, Yugi heard the squelch of the second digit before he was quite ready and it sent a queasy tremor through his pelvis and the back of his neck. Somehow though, wrong-right, he liked it all.

Everything sloshed, Yugi was strangled by the rumble of colours making his head heavier but then, too soon, Atemu was rubbing the blunt tip of his arousal at Yugi's half-heartedly pried body. He sunk, Yugi became breathless, and it was instantly erotic but too much. There was an ache, Yugi groaned, tightened the mumble of his fingers over himself and straining couldn't quite move to any great resistance.

"Oah…" Atemu turned his lips, swore viciously hard and hoarse under his breath till his voice was like clippers. Hands fastened vice tight round Yugi's hips to drag them solidly into each other, thumping their body weight into the desk.

Yugi didn't have it in him to be tense. The burn was pleasant in a sickening spinning way and head sighing back into unsupported space he moaned trying to wrap his legs stupidly round the mobsters hips.

Atemu bucked, thrust brokenly into heat and unbent security not properly pried open while askew lips hanging open Yugi let him ankles squeezing in a lopsided lock. Sigh, loosening tightness and space, air, then _whoosh_, impact, invasion, the broken arch of the spine, the slap of Atemu's heavy balls against the back of Yugi's spread cheeks…

"Nah…nggh…"

Atemu growled, skin slapped hard, the pulse of hips burying him to the hilt almost slid Yugi off the polished wood and gasping he scrambled to dig his nails in.

Another hard thrust; short and deep.

"Nha-Wait! Wait!" Yugi panted, finding his elbows. "Up-_yaah-nrgh_…" His attempt tumbled into tight growling murmurs mid-sentence.

Atemu's arm wrapped round his back, pulled him up and the mobster seemed to comprehend before the other had even finished the thought. Yugi's vision swam as he came back up the right way, throat burning and in a clumsy, perhaps too loud, scamper the man fell back into the desk chair almost missing it as his still clad ass skidded on cotton.

It pulled Yugi down onto him, into his lap, induced a ripple of horrible sensation and sound.

Yugi remembered everything tangled but all his wires of long term memory and coherency were still there. He wasn't drunk he was just foggy, a mild mist, that buzzed him just enough to make him clumsier, careless. Yugi's head fell back aroused, Atemu kissed soft then firm up his jugular as Yugi's fingers curled in his hair and pulsating Yugi rode his hips. They moaned, the wheels creaked, Yugi couldn't seem to bounce himself high enough in his steady seat astride the man's hard cock and it all…

He moaned into Atemu's ear, kissed him, and supping Atemu pulled his mouth down for sweeter contact. They were almost starving. Yugi didn't remember sexual tension on his part at the beginning, he certainly felt it after, but he noticed, in the interim glancing over his shoulder through time, that Atemu had always lingered a little close into coupling imagery. Perhaps, as far as Yugi could recollect, from day one Atemu Sennen had found him attractive, intelligent, determined… or maybe Yugi just read too far into old scraps of the skewed comments he remembered.

Either way, cemented together, purr-purring in that primal way they crested the wave and crying against the spasm in his throat Yugi clenched his teeth not to scream. Yami was asleep down the hall, he had thought, Yami was asleep while his essential mother and father…

Yugi remembered them laying forehead to forehead, cupping Atemu's cheeks, head swimming as slumped into the groaning desk chair they panted off the fumes left over.

Atemu kissed him, Yugi returned the whole motion, and the mobster's hands stroked over his elbows. They sort of liked each other, recognized a member of the same species. If they had a sub-species, which Yugi was sure they did, it was categorized by bad ideas, little foresight, stunted emotional growth and obsessive compulsive tendencies. Unhealthy they were electrically safe, an oasis, together. Two years later Yugi couldn't fathom breathing without the psychopath who panted under him then.

Yugi yawned into Atemu's neck, rubbed his shoulder absently as his head fell and stiffening a little Atemu straightened under him.

Yugi froze, panicked.

"What?" He whispered sharply.

"Nothing," Atemu muttered falling back, "thought I heard something."

Yugi turned over the yoke of his shoulder, heart fluttering and reviewed the obscured semi darkness of the lab round them. Nothing there he joked to himself. It was all okay, salvageable, Yami was asleep. Their little den of infamy was safe another soft farmer's night.

Still Yugi stood a little faster, cleaned a little quicker, without waiting for his legs to stop trembling totally after that. His body ached, a little raw from the intrusion and the fusion but he dismissed it under the back ache of playing with Yami all day.

He was still semi breathless but less lightheaded as in gruff whispers Atemu kissed him goodnight and agreeing to security details they parted.

It had to have been then…

It couldn't have…

It had to have…

Yugi ruined everything.

* * *

Yami was up to his shoulder, _ptt-ptt_-ing, under the spray of the quarantine shower shaking his rumpled, soaking, hair as Yugi dragged his fingers through his own.

Shampoo suds, slick, ran down Yugi's cheeks as elbows up he watched the creature shake its head and turning its nose up close its eyes into the bare spray of the shower heads.

Yami's tail swished. The taloned, venomous, tip idling uncovered and gentle against the air though it had a tendency to scrape Yugi's flank in passing as Yami stood with his eyes closed. It was some reassurance mechanism, checking that Yugi, that Mama, was still right beside him. Yugi wasn't even sure if the creature was entirely aware he did it or if it was just subconscious, instinctive.

What would something like Yami be like with its own young? With the genetically compatible? Yugi could only guess. Apes, chimpanzees, raised their young for considerable periods but crocodiles, snakes, an assortment of the things cobbled into Yami's genetic sequence abandoned their hatchlings at birth. Yugi didn't even know how Yami's kind would or could breed.

It was then, Yugi thought, that he noticed, while Yami sniffed, the burgeoning haze of coarse hair forming between the creature's strengthening legs. Hormones, adolescents…

Yugi swallowed, hurting.

* * *

Yami stretched out in his sleep then, in those days Yugi resumed measuring him every morning, till he consumed most of the mattress during the night. His internal temperature, his core body heat, had risen by then to be stably higher than Yugi's so he tended to toss free the sheets but in the night Yugi would burrow into them. Maybe it was an effect of the air conditioning on Yami or something more naturalistic. Those variables were harder to pin down.

He woke one day, somewhere towards the end, with Yami's arm over his blanketed waist. The thing had sprawled along his back, laying his weight folded over Yugi's, well-armed mouth slack along the back of Yugi's neck.

In an instant, groggy with bed warmth, Yugi pushed into it and Yami's grip tightened round him. Yugi blinked, dazed and weak to find that, for the first time, Yami was holding _him_ not nestled into Yugi's bosom like a frightened, twittering, march hare.

* * *

The thick, tightly coarse, pubic hair became more apparent in a week or less and no less than three weeks after his teeth had so expanded Yami stood eye to eye with Yugi.

He sprawled, when Yugi glanced, on the cool spread of the seamless floor under a vent from the air conditioning like a well muscled jungle cat. Yugi turned down, tried to focus on another detailed, uneasy, report to Atemu about the increased toxicity of the creature's venom and began to wonder if he'd need a new anti-venom.

Yami's appetite had expanded. He'd sniffed out half the cupboards when three fattened badgers didn't seem quite to sate him anymore in the last week. Atemu had sent a calf, about four feet tall, and in a sealed vault Yami had munched the bones clear that morning. Yugi had seen, on the security fed from his computer, how Yami could bite open the bones and find the protein rich marrow to strip even that down. He processed everything; intestinal tract, skin, the jellied eyes…

He finally, only now, seemed quenched and scrapping his claws on the tiles Yami settled back fatly with his navel exposed and a tiny ghosting trail of snake hairs tingling up from his covered groin to his high set belly button.

He was getting so_ big_.

Yugi swallowed, rested his face into his hands, and began to worry. Young tended to peel off from their mothers, their original packs, to assert themselves either independently or in a new group of the same species. There would be, Yugi worried, an invisible line to pass where Yugi would no longer be considered kin and perhaps, newly, considered _food_.

His chest tightened.

Yami rose to his elbows and huffing deep in the back of his muzzle had a much deeper set of sounds that emanated out of his broadening chest now. Yugi glanced up, jolted, and keening Yami seemed to inquire.

Yugi forced a smile.

"It's okay," he rasped weakly, scared.

Yami frowned, rolled onto his knees and trekking up onto his hairless lion paw jointed human-toed feet padded to Yugi. Yugi locked the screen. He was too smart.

Yami leant, hunched almost like Atemu would and leaning butted his forehead into Yugi's cheek. His heart flipped, he almost cried, and raising his hand patted the other's cheek as Yami's nose nuzzled into the plush of his.

"It's okay," he promised hoarsely, "I'm fine."

Yami gave another, purposefully gentle, nuzzle into his shoulder.

* * *

Yugi woke one morning, almost there, with Yami's chin resting atop his sleeping head. It seemed to happen overnight that coiled afresh round him the thing was_ bigger _than him, holding him, nesting.

Yugi forced his normal smile, nudged the now tensely solid navel of the beast, and tried to convince him to rise.

"Come on big guy," he patted lost into Yami's hair, unable now to force him to do anything. "Breakfast."

_Prill-_ing in the back of his throat, like a large bird, kind of the same deep throated noise a pelican made Yami buried his face in Yugi's side arms slung round his waist. Yugi tried to laugh, hoarse, and scrapped his nails between newly defined shoulder blades.

"Up."

Yami grunted but raising his mused hair complied, glancing glassily to Yugi with those big reptilian eyes. The pupils had morphed a little, not quite slitted, expanded rather to see better in darkness; to hunt. Yugi felt like he was looking into a fish tank.

Yami measured_ seven feet _tall that morning.

Yugi emailed Atemu.

* * *

It was all kosher, the typical nursery, by noon. Yugi had centrifuges on the work bench. Yami was slouched in a desk chair, tail swishing, eyes flickering between Yugi's back, the rubric cube delicately prized in his sharpened fingers, and the folded open copy of _Jane Eyre_propped on a nearby desk just within reach of those sinewy arms of his.

The security door whooshed.

Yami leant up taller, eyes keen and glinted like a well-trained grey hound. He sniffed deep, rubric cube still in his fingers, and the tension that extended through his taunt legs and honed abdominals highlighted what was still exposed of that trailing pubic hair running from his off-hue belly button.

"It's okay," Yugi cooed gently, "it's just 'Tem."

Yami's eyes flickered to him, then sharply back towards the door and noise twittering sniffed as he stilled.

Atemu strode in, all saunter, and careless grinned over Yami like he owned the place. He did but Yugi doubted Yami would see it that way. Would he still remember? Still know the smell? His glinted eyes narrowed.

Atemu threw a crinkling paper bag over the silver coated lab table where _Jane Eyre_lay and winked.

"There ya go muscles, brought doughnuts, help yourself."

Yami's gaze didn't flicker and keeping a good three feet as he passed the closet point near the creature, specimen thirteen, Atemu didn't make eye contact entirely as he passed round him. Yami followed him without ever moving, shoulders down, forearms between his knees with the cube in his clawed fingers till everything about him seemed too long and bony. If he stood now he'd been imposing over Atemu's six-four. Atemu gave him an almost subtle wide berth.

He came to Yugi by the centrifuge, ducking in smooth and fearless.

"Look it's all grown up," Atemu teased striding in to hook his arm jovially round Yugi's waist. The touch still burned down Yugi's thighs as Atemu's lips came close to his cheekbone. "It's even got your eyes baby-mama."

Two things happened simultaneously.

"Sto-" Yugi nearly coloured, hand slipping over Atemu's clavicle to push him away, and tried to defend himself from the teasing however weakly. Atemu's presence sent a well recalled ripple of heat through him like an infection that left Yugi's scar tingling.

However…

Yami _hissed_.

It cut a metaphysical string in the air. Everything shifted polarity. Everything dropped about four degrees noticeably.

The creature, their creature, hunched slightly. Their fat march hair baby lessened to compress those seven feet of sinewy muscle. Fingers arched round the plastic technicolour cube, tail raised behind it, it made a noise which drew its lips from its well set teeth and, in the snarl, reminded Yugi of Australian lizards.

They were brittle in the sharp intake of breath that followed.

Atemu had frozen, watching.

Yugi saw Yami hunch lower, sinking into the same stance he used to make before pouncing into Yugi's lap when he was the size of a house cat, and pushing stoutly Yugi forced Atemu off him to stumble a foot back. The man was too focused on Yami to really notice, eyes steady, and all at once Sennen was curt business. Yami's tail swayed, he straightened a little but eased only a portion.

"What the _fuck_was that?" Atemu hissed softly through his teeth to Yugi, eyes never wavering off it.

"I think…" Yugi swallowed, leaning the small of his back into the counter, hands gripping the sides. "I think he's reached sexual maturity which would make _that,_ I guess_,_ a claim for dominance as alpha male. It's all the mammal in him it-"

"You _guess?_"

"Of course I guess," Yugi spat, this had always been theoretical sciences they were flying off.

They'd gone into this blind as badgers. Parenthood turned nasty now, sharp focus, and Yugi was so aware that Yami understood them but couldn't reply. He was so aware that Atemu's _it_usage might be insulting.

"And why," Atemu grunted in combat stance steady, "didn't it hiss at you _Honey?_"

"Because _sweetheart_," Yugi stiffened, trying not to seethe. "While you're out all day playing gangster I'm here raising him. He thinks I'm mama._ Literally_."

"Oh joy."

Atemu had always been absent, spaced, healthily distanced but that had created a new chemistry down here in the pit Yugi realized. Yugi was kin still but evidently Atemu wasn't so much anymore. That was what he got, what he deserved really, for leaving Yugi languishing with the child. Yugi hadn't seen sunlight, hadn't been able to steal away, in_ months_. He'd adjusted to the den.

Yami watched, wouldn't move.

"I think you better go." Yugi murmured, glancing coyly in suggestion. "I'll email you the details."

"Right," Atemu rasped still against the same counter, "I'll be waiting."

He pushed up, stood his full height, and again, ever so slightly, Yami bent like a stag for combat jaw tightening.

"Yami," Yugi piped.

The pupils flickered, looked for distress, then flashed back to Atemu.

"It's fine," Yugi insisted, "he just came to say hello. He bought food. He's leaving. Don't be rude."

It sounded so stupid. Yugi almost added;_ it's daddy_but his tremulous lips were too cautious to let him. Atemu took a step, shoulders prize fighter steady and eyes focused like the pair of them were circling beasts. Yami wouldn't sit back.

On the backs of his eyelids as he blinked Yugi could see Yami ripping Atemu's ribcage open.

Yugi held out his hands, hushed his voice and tried to appeal in offering.

"Yami," he cooed, "come here."

He held his arms out to the creature this time.

It was the biggest mistake he'd ever made.

Yami's vision came to him, startled, while Atemu stepped. Yami twisted back hissing and Atemu paused standing tall. The moment lapsed. Its eyes roved hesitantly over Yugi, narrowed and considering and then to Atemu with a squawking, deep bellied, grumbling.

Yugi's fingers shook.

Yami stood, on those so inhuman feet, and hunching a little stepped out. His hand, in an all too human gesture left the cube by _Jane Eyre _and chest broad bought himself proudly closer to Atemu.

Yami watched him, the beast in the cage, and always a trainer, always a warrior, Atemu didn't even flinch. Didn't even seem to breathe as seven feet of monster murmured with a low, rolling, rasp past him.

Yugi expected it to come into his arms, like always, but instead Yami took his fingers in his, lowered their hands, and while Yugi's navel clenched, butterflies exploding, Yami's well-sharpened jaw tilted closer. Atemu watched.

Yugi shivered, just breathing, as rumbling out a sigh Yami rested, eventually, with his nose bent onto Yugi's cheek bone raise under the skin. He mumbled, a twitter of a smaller animal, and nudging his nose into Yugi the young man closed his eyes half terrified half wondered.

Atemu took a slow, loud, step.

Yami rested into Yugi.

Atemu walked, even footed, out of the lab and it wasn't until step three in that slow vigil onward that Yugi could bring himself to open his eyes and watch. Fear compounded. Fear of losing his young, fear of being eaten, all of it mingled till Yugi tasted bile.

Yami licked his cheek, a tiny swipe, and when he was the size of a march hare and the shape of a rat he used to drag that sandpaper tongue over Yugi's palm all the time. Yugi remembered, it juxtaposed, it frightened him.

What had he done…?

* * *

Yugi convinced Yami somehow, nearly voiceless and shaking as he was, to sit back down. Yugi couldn't quite remember how. He thought it was with the promise of the doughnuts and as he opened the packet, standing by the table with Yami in his seat beside again Yugi almost dropped them.

His hand dipped into the plastic and Yami's long, heavy, vaguely-green arm wrapped round his waist just to hang there. Comfort, peace, terror, anxiety… Yugi became very clumsy suddenly pressing the dough into his mouth and closing his eyes in each blink for longer than was necessary.

Yugi and Atemu eventually got a chance to argue on the email.

The mobster had detailed ideas of how to knock out their creature-feature but it would take time and organizing.

Yugi didn't want Yami rattled any more that morning, insisted he was fine.

Atemu backed off but only a hesitant smidgen and said they'd need to organize to tank it in the next week anyway. It was done growing. Done with everything they needed to observe.

Yugi consented, broken hearted, but convinced him to wait another few days. Another few days to mourn, to hold, to nurture the cancerous first born…

Atemu's email said he'd be watching security fed. Just in case.

Yugi should've listened to his gut.

* * *

"You should go to bed," Yugi whispered from his desk, "it's late kiddo."

Yami wasn't a fledgling anymore though. He was huge, barely dressed, and slouching in the desk chair in the low light across the room his eyes glimmered like a possum's at Yugi. He tilted his head, Yugi forced a smile.

"Go on," he tempted, "I'll be there soon."

It was the same old routine Yugi counted on. The day had been so normal since noon, relaxed, but in that second he sensed something… _off_.

Yugi wanted though, so badly, just to have a moment to himself to cry. He was going to lose him, that inevitable parent's letting go to empty the nest. They wouldn't kill Yami, surely, but they'd take him, test him, see if they could train him to be some Syrian war weapon… He was moving, in an old fashioned way, into his father's world. Yugi wanted to mourn.

Yami stood, impossibly well formed, and so imposing in half shadows with his legs extended and his head down.

He didn't look human or at least he looked enough so to be unnerving.

Yugi loved him, his baby, his pet but…

Even then Yugi was afraid.

Yami's tail swished in a low barely noticeable motion of the tip, not the normal lazy swagger from side to side. The pause made him seem thoughtful. He had his chin down, thinking, shoulders off balance with one slightly higher than the other as he did so.

"Yami…?" Yugi tried to pull him back to the surface. "Are you alright?"

He wasn't sure if he should've opened his mouth or should've played invisible.

Yami glanced, face closer to the light, and those dark pitch-aubergine eyes seemed vaguely normal there, more like a man's, almost like Atemu's garnet. In this alteration Yugi could make out their shared bone structure in Yami's face. Atemu's genes were still there but hidden under waves of so many non-human impulses vying for control.

Yami's eyes moved, down, up, to one side…

He stepped closer rather than away but seemed slack enough for Yugi to convince himself it was something little. Something easily fixed.

"What…?" Yugi whispered, watching transfixed and frozen.

The vibe, the atmosphere, all changed.

Yami slunk closer, claws scrapped the top of Yugi's desk, and coming round with one hand on Yugi's papers the creature bent at the waist towards him.

The second hand, claws and all, curled ever so slightly under Yugi's knee.

Yugi worried, stomach sinking, that it was sinking in for the kill. That he was going to be dinner. That he was going to die. Yugi didn't think he could hurt the thing, could struggle, when he knew that face too well. His little nudger, his little march hare house-cat boy…

Yami licked up the side of his cheek wisping out air still stagnant from the roof of his mouth where the remains of that morning's calf still sat. Death smell, meat smell, not toothpaste and Irish liquor…

It seemed harmless, Yugi held his breath, Yami's lips came together over his teeth and-

He kissed Yugi's cheek.

He'd never, ever, done that before.

Yugi's air evaporated and so, so, fast everything went wrong.

The second clawed paw, hand, skimmed from the desk to Yugi's elbow as his hands raised on impulse between them never really ghosting the skin of the bare chest. Another kiss, firmer, to his cheek and Yugi convinced himself that was okay, his baby-boy, but… the thoughts stuttered. Yugi remembered only the frantic bubble of his head, pop-pop, but outside that every motion was crystal clear, burnt, on the inside of his skull. Retrospect was 20-20 perfect vision.

Yami's fingers tightened in the second before the storm, claws digging into Yugi's skin like the tightening of a bear trap before his mouth pushed, hard, into Yugi's.

"_Nh!-_"

A weak, frantic, gasp fell out of Yugi. His eyes wouldn't close. Those thin lips, sharp hands, everything so uncorrelated to Yugi's native species. His arms steeled on instinct and three hundredths of a second later Yugi was pushing.

"No! Yami no! Ya-"

It was like he was disciplining the dog. The creature's grip tightened, Yugi's mouth twisted away and thin lips fell hungry on his cheek while squirming Yugi heaved at the broader, stronger, shoulders.

"-ami, pfft-" it was hard to think, to move, to breathe.

Lips pushed in an unending trail first at his cheek, then at his jaw, then half behind his ear and Yugi struggled. He was hypersensitive to those teeth, those claws, that venom that in a second of unrestrained anger could break every bone in his body now. Yami was so much bigger than him.

"-no, you can'-" he was a muttering mess. "St- wait!-"

He pushed hard as the shoulders. Yami's long, well-muscled, arms tightened in a coil pulling him into his chest one arm round Yugi's knees the other round his waist. Yugi squirmed, Yami squeezed, and the rolling desk chair under Yugi clattered back when the motion made everything awkward.

Yugi slipped out of his seat, into Yami as the only thing now holding him up and in the mess of the fall they tumbled sickeningly to the floor.

"-n-h-Ya-!-"

Yugi was pulled under him. Yami's claws ran up his back through Yugi's shirt, squeezed him up into the hot planes of raw muscle and lips roving its mouth was all at once back on Yugi's again. Yugi's elbows fidgeted pinned between them, hands curled weakly on the opposing sides of Yami's bare neck.

This was not in the plan. This was not supposed to happen.

This was inevitable.

Yami made a noise, rumbling, in his belly. The growl of something big, African, that descended into a hiss as that dirty not-quite right tongue of its thrust wetly to squirm into Yugi's mouth. He could taste the old blood, dead things, raw meat-

Yami purred, low and twittering but consistent. Yugi's heart skidded anxious, panicked, beats as the beast's arms folded round him. Yami's fingers curled in the back of Yugi's collar, at the top of his spine and breaking off the kiss, the tang, pushed his lips pulsing down Yugi's neck. He found the joint of Yugi's shoulder, he purred, he grumbled and every roving sound ran up its spine.

Yugi's mouth came open, his jaw warbled soundlessly like a dying bird shaking on the sand.

Yami's clawed grip moved round him. Suddenly Yugi was totally on the tall tiles long, wiry, jungle limbs over him with one dangerously venomous tail flickering out of sight.

One hand sat tight still in the back collar of his tee, the other came between them letting Yugi's legs slump onto the ground and fisting his claws in the front of Yugi's shirt-

_Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrip_

"_Hna!"_ Yugi gasped, tugged up almost by the force.

Both hands, both too big but perfectly proportioned hands, tugged yanking hard at the same moment tearing the cotton open. Yami could tear bones open. Yugi wasn't wearing his lab coat, all that was left was skin.

Yami ducked in, Yugi tensed afraid it'd bite his sternum open and then Yami rubbed, nose and lips, burying his face along Yugi's exposed skin. Yugi arched, legs kicking out on reflex, hands flailing for purchase. Yami _purred_.

Sandpapery cat's tongue licked, long and slick from Yugi's dipped navel all the way up his neck in a smooth stroke as claws came back round him twittering over vulnerably bear skin.

Yugi made a noise, tried to speak but didn't know what to do.

How did _he_ know what to do? How'd Yami know to pounce?

It dawned on Yugi;

_Daddy taught you this, didn't he? _

_You were watching._

It saw, it heard, it had a funnel to direct its instincts and the closest thing round here that registered as anything remotely female to take his hormone induced frustrations out on was Yugi. Yugi was mother, Yugi met criteria. Yugi hadn't passed from kin to food, oh no worse, Yugi had passed from kin to mate to fuck-

"N-_ah!_"

The sound strangled out broken. It came from high in Yugi's throat, outside, from some realm of fright and disgust and sensation. Yami's hands wavered between them sliding solid palm and claws that left thin red lines down Yugi's back, his side, his stomach… on the verge of bleeding. His epidermis was thinner, weaker, than Yami's with crocodile and a tendency towards exoskeletons in his DNA sequence. Yami's tongue, Yami's teeth, _everywhere_ so hungry…

Those purrs, deep set, drowned every tiny sound of Yugi's right out. Yami's purring, grumbling, growling buttered over everything till Yugi could barely hear himself, lost, under the arch of the jungle limbs. Yugi was under a huge, smart, hot-blooded predator in the zoo after hours. Yugi was five-eight Yami was seven-nothing; outmatched. He'd lost control.

Yugi wasn't sure why but he remembered, in that moment, realizing… Or at least the epiphany struck in very specific wording in that second that; _it's not going to eat you. It's going to fuck you_.

_Where's Atemu?_

It dawned on Yugi right before an impeding sense of betrayal. That _lazy bastard;_ watching the security feed? Yeah, sure. Fucking mobster.

Two hands, stronger than steel cables, found the waistband of Yugi's pants as Yami hunched over him. Yugi remembered the pair, he'd worn them every other day, they were long, black, they swished loose round his ankles but-

"-ami no-!"

_Yank-rrrrrrrrrrrrrip_

Then they were gone.

Yugi's hips dropped back onto the tiles. He squeaked throatily. Yami's knees kicked between his, legs longer and stronger at the angle. Its forehead rested on Yugi's chest hands tearing at what was left till clinging to his legs. Cold air conditioned breath down his inner thighs, antiseptic and foreign like he was going under in a hospital for an operation.

Yugi found his elbows, up and squirm-

Yami yanked him down by his hips, licked up his neck still purring mindlessly and that tail, that neurotoxin cocktail injector, curled tight round Yugi's exposed thigh. Just like it had coiled round his arm when this thing was a ratty newborn and Yugi had bottle fed it the tail wrapped now round him with a whole flush of new implications. Whether Yami intended to make it known or not Yugi knew how much that venom could do and just how fast. He'd be dead before the thing even knew what had happened.

Yami wasn't letting go.

Yugi lay back, slumped, blinking dumbly at the stretch ivory of the laboratory ceiling of the subbasement. Everything splintered to kaleidoscope focus. This wasn't a man, this wasn't human, this was basically a seven foot snake monster… nothing could make that not unnerving, nothing in the way Yami hissed could make the sound more human, nothing at all in Yugi's memories could make him forget how this man-thing had once hopped on four legs with big beady black eyes less than a year ago.

Yami purred, hoarse grunting, and fingers extending as he hunched like a feeding beast to lick at Yugi's exposed navel ran his palms greedily up the inner flanks of Yugi's thighs. Right over where his tail was knotted round Yugi's skin, over his hip bones, over his knee…

Yugi closed his eyes. That was worse. The tongue was too triangular against the indents of his skin, the claws too pronounced. Yami sucked, teeth scrapping sharp enough to scratch, at the junction of his hip tracing the raise of the bone while Yami's broad chest sunk between Yugi's twitching legs holding them apart.

Heat, the wrong kind of arousal, Yugi's nails had nothing to dig into only a raft of seamless tiles.

Claws slightly blackened and hard tipped-toed along his thighs, Yugi's hair fell in his face, he wasn't sure if he could remember how to breathe. This was…

Yami rose, sat back and Yugi watched still sprawled on his shoulder blades as the thoughtful, hungry, portrait of an almost human face came into view. Yami was long gone from focus, submerged, Yugi wasn't reaching him now he could just tell by the eyes. It was the same look specimen thirteen got when it was eating mind otherwise occupied outside petty things like Yugi's voice.

He felt it move, thighs flexing and knew the shorts he'd talked the big thing into were gone.

Yugi found it hard to look away. Anatomically Yami was healthily in proportion, he knew that already but there was something alien and tremor inducing about…Yugi took a sharp intake of breath, didn't quite want to know or see but there it was; leaking tip, hardened length… he pursed his lips, noise tremulous in the back of his throat…

Yugi's hips made half a motion back without his conscious knowledge, rising up like a cat out of a box almost onto his elbows, forgetting how to breathe. He only noticed when Yami took his hips back in hand and purring sinuously pulled him down onto his back and closer. _Oh fuck_….

No condom, Yugi doubted Yami even knew what they were, just broad hips and strong abdominals bearing down against Yugi. He was engorged, he was thick, bigger than Atemu easily but then that was down to simple logic. Yugi threw his head back, tried to focus on the ceiling but his stomach turned over at the sickening realization that the next motion exposed.

Purring, Yami could squeeze his hip and his thigh simultaneously while rubbing the steadily dripping tip of his cock against Yugi's entrance. There seemed to be too much fluid, it had a different consistency to Atemu's pre-cum and the fact Yugi knew that was disturbing enough. What was worse was that the creature has essentially three hands; one on his cock, one on Yugi's hip and the tight tail looped round his thigh. It was a grip no human could mimic in the history of mankind. It reminded Yugi of what exactly was happening to him.

"Ah!-" the gasp then, "-_nhggh_-"

Yugi scrunched his face, eyes clenching, teeth mashing as his head contorted twisting his hair into the tiles.

The head slipped in, forced, but Yugi's body rather submitted, knees unable to draw up under the creature. Then however, all instinct, Yami thrust, all at once. The head made Yugi gasp but the rawness with which the creature sunk into him would've let him tumble into a scream if it hadn't constricted the air out of him on impact.

_Hurtshurtshurts_-

"_Aah_…"

Yugi ground it out, cringing, clenching and extending as his toes fell from their immediate scrunch. Hissing he exhaled, eyes half opening under the sting of the bright lights, and the way he slackened wasn't so much with ease but with the same resolve anyone did after a stout punch. What else could he do? His body couldn't hold that much tension forever. It just fell, shoulders slumping, panting.

"Nhhh-_rggggh_…" Yami's groan intensified, head slumped like a stone on Yugi's sternum, falling into the hoarsest, nastiest, growl Yugi had ever heard the beast make. Primal satisfaction, victory, it was all there in that noise that convinced Yugi to stay slumped.

Yugi was too hot, it was the pain maybe, he knew he'd bleed a little, he had too, he was stretched too far too fast. In a flicker he was panting, sweating, and the thing hadn't even rolled its hips yet. It was just sitting, knees apart, cock entrenched satisfactorily inside Yugi.

In the spluttering pant that came out of it next Yami, specimen thirteen, almost sounded like he was laughing.

Yugi's hands lulled by his head, trying to breathe, because even unwinding didn't totally erase the way the impaling spread made him ache all the way up his spine. Yami purred then, from twittering down into jungle cat, thoroughly pleased with himself. _You wanted this, didn't you? Since when? How long? _When had Yugi's little monster stopped being his little monster and started giving into the precipice urge to rut?

_Argh, God,_ Yugi's stomach flipped. The whole word made him shiver, hair thick in his face, because he was, essentially, being _rutted_.

Its hips drew back, the ache of too-much alleviated long enough for Yugi to sigh in relief but moaning Yami sunk back that same desperate inch just in time to tighten Yugi's inhale. He tightened on impact all over. Yami gave a funny _putt-puttttttt_, shoulders trembling, at the way Yugi must've flexed round him when he clenched. Yeah, it liked that.

Again.

The tiniest sound of slapping skin.

And _again_…

Yugi's elbows pushed back into the tiles as Yami started to find a pitifully slow, sensuous, rhythm to rut him to. Yugi teeth dug together and didn't quite know what noise to make as it rested over him and inside him heavy everywhere. Yami was hot, warmer to the touch than Yugi's freezing back on the bare tiles or his frigid toes in the air conditioning. It was almost comforting expect those sounds shattered every attempt to drift back into Yugi's mind.

One second, only one, he'd been away and then he'd hear the guttural thrill down its chest or the scrape of Yami's claws on the tiles and suddenly Yugi would be right back in the instant, here, under him.

It slickened, the whole motion, became easier.

Yugi's mind clicked over once sluggish and spluttering. That was why the pre-cum was so thick, why there was such a continuous stream of it trickling into him; natural lubrication. God it was painfully ironic, traitorous, like his whole machine, creature, had been rigged up to pay him back like this.

Still struggling wasn't much of an option either lost in hormones Yami would snap to keep him down or the human in him might become offended enough to hurt all the same. There was too much Yugi couldn't compete with; the bite force of Yami's jaw, the rows of incisors, the poison tail, the hands that had ripped open the chest cavities of bigger beings than Yugi. He was human, fragile, and now all that could bite him back in the ass now his prime creation was strong enough, big enough, to return the conqueror.

Yami thrust in one long motion, sinking deep enough for skin to slap and Yugi's thighs quaked in not in pain but rather at the shake the friction induced.

Pleasure, on a razor's edge, Yugi could feel it coming.

He was starting to like it…

_Thrust_.

He squirmed, teeth falling open, and Yami purred encouragingly at the wisp of a sound coming out of Yugi. He licked, _it_ licked, up to column of Yugi's bare neck past the scrap of ruined t-shirt still trapped round his shoulder. It thrust, buried itself to the hilt, and Yugi rasped weakly under the hands and the weight and the warmth_ taken_.

That slow, world ending, pace didn't change Yami just lengthened his stride.

Yugi pursed his lips back together, fingers pressing over his eyes half ashamed and tried to shut up.

Yami's head rose, Yugi could feel it out of the cradle of his shoulder and purring still, not like a man would, Yami bent inquisitively over him.

He was smart.

He thrust suddenly, harder than before, rhythm pitching a different tempo and forced a sudden sound ripped out of Yugi. Yugi gasped, Yami growled, and he could feel how satisfied it was in the way it savoured the next undulations of its hips.

Yugi's hand, dumb, came over his mouth. Yami's pinned it over his head in the next second and_ hissed_. Total control had flipped tables.

This wasn't going to be fast, not like he'd hoped initially, the mammal and the monster in Yami would've wanted it fast but the human? Oh whatever was human inside it, inside him, wanted to _enjoy_ this. He was going to take his time and Yugi, pinned open, was going to have to enjoy it eventually.

Yugi moaned. He felt like he was drowning. It seemed to be the only thing he could do. The only thing he was allowed to do. _God_. His hands fisted by his head, too afraid to grasp, too cautious to move suddenly and too hot, too stripped, to even really find the strength to.

He gasped, groaned, wet in the back of his throat and arched his spine in the cold of the air conditioning that constantly flooded the lab. Above him Yami could've been Atemu or some approximation but it was_ wrong_.

The creature's nails dug into the floor afresh, hard knees forcing Yugi's apart, impossibly strong thighs translating to strong steady thrusts. He hissed, in the back of his throat, low and continuous in the growl. Yugi could feel the tail round wrapped slim round his thigh, the poison tip lulling limp against too delicate skin reminding him of every reason not to struggle.

"_Ah_…"

Yami rolled in his hips maintaining an almost inhumanly rhythmic pace. It was steady, unceasing, that hot, firm, length sinking to the hilt in every motion. Rutting.

_God_…

How did Yugi…?

_"Oh…" _

_So good_…

Slow and whispering he realized the pain was almost evaporated. Yugi didn't know how Yami had managed that. Part of him wondered if there was some numbing affect in the pre-cum, something he hadn't foreseen, but his head was too foggy to trace the details. He couldn't block out the stretch of the girth atop the thousand million mini sensations that assaulted him; the hissing, the growling, the scrape, the _fucking_ tail. They repeated over and over.

_Wrongwrongwrong_.

Yugi moaned. His head fell back, Yami brushed deep eyes closed and purring, and twisting Yugi found the firm possessiveness of the next sharp thrust almost hurt. He panted, opened his eyes.

Boots.

Upside down Yugi saw them on the tiles. His whole heart lurched. _Oh thank God!_He threw his head back, lips apart, and eyes wide strained to find Atemu's face gaping across to him.

He'd paused security key in one hand, jacket thrown over his forearm and frozen seemed horrified. He hadn't entirely expected this then.

Yugi hissed, whimpered, in the back of his throat and clenching his teeth tried to make it clear. Yami's eyes were still closed, their thing was too focused on mating, rutting into Yugi, forgetful with that nose of his. Yugi didn't want to speak but he pleaded.

Atemu's eyes met his.

_Help me_.

He whimpered.

Atem nodded, backed slowly, and as the mobster slipped back out of view Yugi nearly panicked. _No don't leave!_ He slumped back, glanced down his own torso again, and found the very image of Yami purring between his thighs. _Oh…oh god… hmmm…_

Clawed hands unhooked from the floor and grasping Yugi under the knee with one and at the hip with another, settling more back onto his knees, grunting and hissing Yami jolted rougher. He was close.

"_Ah!_"

A quick gasp, then a longer sound all tremulous in the twisting of Yugi's throat as grasping him tight to pull his hips closer Yami pushed into what seemed the final stretch his body, his motions, becoming harder. There was suddenly more force, the rut of his hips bumped Yugi into the floor at an odd angle and purring airily the stretch of the thrusts of Yami's arousal had shrunk to an inch or two rubbing in and out of Yugi.

_Ohgodgod_…

He was going to cum. It circulated in Yugi's mind like a lightning bolt. He couldn't find his voice though, not to do anything but moan, and hot through every vein Yugi knew, viciously, that he was going to _like it_. It was almost incomprehensible.

_So close_-

Yami stoped, lurched, and looked up just in time.

Just in time to see Atemu aiming.

Yugi didn't know what was happening when, suddenly, Yami was out of him, off him, and roaring. It happened in a flurry of an instant; Atemu cocked the gun, the sound alerted Yami, Yami lunged, Atemu fired.

Yugi heard the shot before he'd rolled onto his stomach, panicked.

Atemu and Yami hit the floor.

Atemu had missed.

Yami roared, Atemu held him back by the shoulders and then the mobster's face twisted as, teeth exposed to snarl, Yami seemed to surged.

"N-_ah!_" Atemu cried out.

Yami pulled off him security key in hand, tail dripping, and writhing onto his side Atemu clutched himself. The venom, the tail, the neurotoxin had gone right through Atemu's leather jacket into his flank.

Yugi was on his elbows, panicked. Yami looked to him, their eyes meet, and Yami took half a step forward. Yugi wrenched back.

Yami turned tail and _ran_.

Yugi forced himself up. His legs were jellied, lower bodied numbed unnaturally, and something sickeningly slippery down his inner thighs slipped trying to find his feet.

"Stop _him!_" Atemu hissed when Yugi almost fell onto him. "Get _him!_ It'll get out!"

Yugi wasn't listening. He had two options; stop Yami's escape or save Atemu's life. After he scrambled, naked and weak after Yami trying to use a weapon he'd never touched Atemu would be dead before Yugi ever got back to him. It was an easy choice.

Atemu moaned, half screamed, all pain all too much and Yugi knew the burn must've been agonising. It was shooting towards his heart. Yugi fumbled, hands jittering clumsily, through his bottom drawer and twice he dropped the anti-venom kit he kept their just in case. He had sixteen hidden through the labs by then. This had been inevitable.

"_Ngah!_" Atemu screamed open mouthed into the tiles saliva between his teeth and looked every bit in unimaginable pain. He broke an octave.

Yugi stabbed the needle tip in, found a vein sitting on Atemu's legs to try and hold him down and arms wrapping round him tried desperately to pin the mobster from writhing as the empty syringe scattered away under his desk.

Atemu kicked, flailed, Yugi whispered panicked and crying.

He worried that when Atemu eventually stopped moving he would also stop breathing.

Yugi didn't even hear the security door open, the vault unlock, Yami escape.

* * *

Atemu limped when they wrapped the wound. The skin was singed, it would die and melt off round the wound till he had a scar as horrible as the one on Yugi's forearm but in two months he would be proud of it.

Yugi couldn't seem to stop shaking. He was out of options, out of responses.

He didn't remember how long they spent on the tiles. He didn't remember how they got upstairs; Yugi naked, trying to hold Atemu up with the mobster's arm over his shoulder, Yugi's knees buckled together against the numbness in his legs…

Somehow later in the evening, in the clusterfuck of what happened next, A temu was shouting orders, loading guns, calling in favours. Yugi didn't know what was going on. Atemu seemed to decide when Yugi fell in the carpeted hallway of the mansion that he was carrying him. He wrapped Yugi, with his own weak hands, in a blanket and put him behind a door, on his own bed, while he shouted at people.

Yugi only remembered sobbing on his side.

It was all a flurry; his baby gone, his baby hurting him, his babe having to die, Atemu almost dying, fear, pain, helplessness…all of nature and more than nine months in seclusion in the subbasement came crashing down on him till Yugi was wailing.

Atemu came in when he'd cried himself hoarse. Like an irritable father he'd pulled Yugi up by his upper arms and never hurting, never rough, hand pulled the blankets down and dressed him sloppily while Yugi continued to attempt to bury his face in the man's chest. His warm, cologne scented, human chest…

Atemu pulled him up, Yugi's arms locked round his neck, and pulling a new pair of safe denim jeans up Yugi's hips Atemu fastened them.

"Come on," he whispered stoutly, all business.

He loaded Yugi, who was still brainless, into a limo while Yugi's face hid in his shoulder.

Yugi didn't notice anything, not really, till Atemu was pulling him out of the car and they were at the almost empty air field. For an instant Yugi thought the mobster was going to execute him to cover his trail. Yugi expected the bullet and glassy eyed didn't see anything beside Atemu's face.

"Come on," he urged again, turning them towards the private jet and Yugi's knees closed in.

"Wh-what?" He stuttered.

"We're leaving," Atemu grunted, "out of the country."

Yugi could only…

He nodded, awed.

* * *

Yugi slept in Atemu's side, with the mobster's arm round him and the mobster's fingers tangled in his. He slept all the way through the international dateline with Atemu's chin on his head. It wasn't until, in the darkened cabin, a private air hostess brought Atemu his fourth drink in a respectful hush that Yugi really remembered any kind of will to live cognizant inside him. Atemu ignored her, spoke low, and both of them seemed aware of stirring Yugi from his daze.

Yugi's fingers tightened in the man's.

"Where are we going?"

"I've got friends in Russia." Atemu sloshed the ice in his glass tiredly. "They'll move us over with new passports. We'll be in the Ukraine by tomorrow.

"Ukraine?" Yugi murmured.

"They don't extradite to the US."

They were running. Not from Yami but from whoever might find him or their research now; the FBI, the CIA, NASA…They'd broken at least a dozen international laws and perhaps several hundred in the US alone. It was more than four life sentences.

Yugi nodded, turned his face back into Atemu and soaked up his smell.

He didn't think about his Grandpa till he was in a thick winter jacket, in another limo, in Europe.

* * *

In the two years since Yugi and Atemu hadn't set foot on US soil. Yugi lived, worked, in another of Atemu's expensive little houses and like any other international charlatan Atemu still ran his illegal crime ring. It was international Yugi had realized. Atemu might've preferred the US but he could work from Cairo, from St Petersburg, from Beijing…If anything he said their current little hiding spot put them closer to the consultations of the Russian and Italian mafias.

Atemu had brought over most of their files, most of their equipment and left their home in the US destroyed, shambled. Yugi had burnt most of the files and whatever buyer they had been making the project for, whatever purpose, had been mothballed right after their funds had been transferred to an offshore bank.

Yugi's Grandfather didn't know how to speak to him anymore so they didn't speak at all.

Atemu's gangsters, his soldiers of fortune, were still prowling after the million dollar hit he'd placed on Yami in hopes of finding it before the creature ferreted them out or the FBI found it. Either way tenuous as the world now was someone was going to get fucked.

Yugi didn't like to think about it.

Yugi was about two weeks from curing cancer. His previous genetic work patented. Yet he spent most of his down time mournfully considering the thickened cesspit orphanages crammed round them and what lousy parents he and Atemu would be.

He slept in one of Atemu's expensive houses. He went to Atemu's expensive parties. He sat his things by Atemu's expensive cologne on the dresser. He slept in Atemu's very human arms.

He didn't know why, he didn't know how but Yugi talked to the wives of elite mobsters now. He had lunch with them on Tuesday. He knew Atemu's birthday. He knew all about the military school in Cairo and the beatings from Atemu's useless cocaine dealing father. He knew the kind of bitter, tight, way Atemu hugged him when he came home from being shot at near Palestine. He knew the way to kiss a man when you weren't sure if they'd come home.

He knew how to keep his chin high in understanding that every crime lord had mistresses, whores, who came and who went. He knew he wasn't one of them. He knew Atemu was his. He also knew he couldn't change the reality of the fact Atemu would sleep with other girls and that he would be too proud to disrespect Yugi by mentioning it.

He knew a world and a type of love he couldn't associate well with the world he'd grown up in.

Yugi still…

He still listened to those tapes with Yami's baby gargles.

He still had nightmares their perfect, vicious, monster would catch up with he and Atemu one day and slaughter them in their sleep. He could picture Yami's eyes glinting in total darkness. He could run over the genetic profile theorising the likelihood of Yami knocking up some unsuspecting country girl. He could be afraid.

Yugi had had such a bright future.

* * *

1 Is Yami still a threat? Well we've seen here Yami ages super-fast so chances are after two years he might have already died (but there's no way of knowing). Likewise Yami's too genetically different from a human to breed with a human female. As for getting to Europe- there's no way Yami's getting on a plane or over that ocean. With his higher core temp, the reptile in him, Yami will probably find the cold adverse…

2 Why did Yami jump Yugi? Well as far as Yami's inner animal is concerned he did get consent. When Atem left the lab and Yugi called Yami over what does Yami see that as? The Alpha male stands down from a challenge so Yami gets the authority and Yugi is surrendered to him.

3 I have tried writing a part 3 but its not co-operating. If you have any ideas for a part 3, suggestions, let me know in your review and maybe that'll help! For now however the story is complete~

Anyway guys I really hope you enjoyed this. As always I'm sure there's a million little errors and tics and obvious things I've missed but hopefully I'll come back and clean anything up later~


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